Once upon a time, visitors may have relied on printed travel guides from Frommer’s and Fodor’s to plan their trips to Acadia National Park.
But that wasn’t the case when Baltimore resident Caitlin Rosing and her friend Amy Lauenstein recently planned a week of travel to Maine’s coast.
A video going around social media about Cabbage Island Clam Bake in Boothbay first got their attention. Then they searched online for other places in Maine to visit, landing on a plan to spend two days in Boothbay and another four in Bar Harbor and Acadia in August.
“That’s actually why we booked this trip, because we saw some videos [of things] we wanted to do,” said Rosing, while standing at the top of one popular destination in the park, The Beehive mountain.
As visitation to Acadia National Park has soared over the past decade, social media has played a growing role in how people approach their trips. They often look to TikTok, Instagram and other sites for ideas, inspiration and travel tips.
A decade ago, Facebook and Twitter (now called X) were the dominant platforms for people to share their photos and videos on social media. But in recent years, user-produced videos have exploded on other apps such as Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube, both from casual travelers and professional influencers. As a result, videos that provide more than just an image — they also feature music, text and voiceovers — can attract more attention and get a wider audience.
In some cases, those videos appear to be helping to change how visitors have traditionally visited Mount Desert Island and the surrounding region — drawing attention to lesser known spots and making them more of their own destinations.
One of those places is a site called Raven’s Nest off the road that loops around the Schoodic section of the park, which is on pace to have a record number of visits this year.
Until recently, the scenic inlet has been largely unknown, with a profile far lower than more historically popular sites in Acadia such as Thunder Hole or the top of Cadillac Mountain, but it has been featured in several videos posted to TikTok this summer.
One of the videos has gotten more than 185,000 likes, and the site is now labeled on Google Maps. In the 11-second video, moody guitar music plays over the sound of crashing surf as the videographer walks toward the edge of the cliff overlooking the narrow cove and fog shrouds the shoreline and trees in the distance.
“TikTok is where we learned [about] a lot of hidden gems in Acadia,” said Lauenstein. “We were told to go to Schoodic Point and a few other places for less crowds. TikTok is telling everyone to go there.”
Videos and other posts about more familiar attractions in the park can also be easily found. A TikTok video recorded over Memorial Day weekend this year, which shows a long line of hikers slowly snaking up The Beehive’s steep ladder trail, got nearly 60,000 thousand likes and more than 20,000 shares.
A spokesperson for the park declined to comment on what sort of impact social media might be having on visitation to Acadia, saying that park officials do not track or otherwise have data on it. Warm weather certainly is a factor in how busy the park is, but it’s unknown what other factors might contribute to high numbers at Schoodic or in the park more generally, the spokesperson said.
Rosing and Lauenstein also visited some of the more popular sites in Acadia, including The Beehive and the Jordan Pond House, where they ate the famous popovers. During the interview on The Beehive, they said one of the tips they had found online was to try to visit popular sites at slower times of the day.
“We read to come after 2:30 [p.m.]. I think we got to the parking lot at 3,” Rosling said, referring to the nearby parking lot at Sand Beach. “We found a [parking] spot no problem and made it up this trail in 30 minutes.”
Rosing said they also visited the sand bar in downtown Bar Harbor, which is exposed at low tide and connects the village to Bar Island — and which also has been featured in multiple TikTok videos and become a popular tourist spot. For example, one video shows people wading through ankle deep water from Bar Island after the tide started coming back in.
“We are those people that got stuck,” a woman recording the video says. “That’s karma for all the years that I laughed at people.”
Rosing said that she and Lauenstein made it back without getting their feet wet.
“The front part was crowded, but once you got in the tree canopy [on Bar Island] there was no one there,” Rosing said. “We saw three deer. It was lovely.”
An official with the nonprofit group Friends of Acadia, which supports and advocates for the national park, said the group doesn’t have any specific data related to how social media impacts visitation at Acadia, though it knows it does play a role.
But she encouraged people who are researching the park to do additional research online — not just on popular social media sites — to make sure they find the park’s latest rules and conditions.
“We encourage visitors to always also check the park website for the latest information on park safety and trail closures and to be good stewards of our magnificent park,” said Perrin Doniger, spokesperson for the Friends group.
