O P I N I O N

Over-Tourism: Arriving at
Your Doorstep?

Tourists flock to the Maine coast in ever increasing numbers to enjoy its scenic shores, wonderful restaurants, galleries and museums, and welcoming coastal communities. This popularity, however, can be a mixed blessing. The New York Times and multiple other international newspapers carry horror stories about overcrowding of Key West, Charleston, Venice, New Zealand, and even Mt. Everest! Locally, we read in the Portland Press Herald about overcrowding of Peaks Island. According to the National Park Service, March 2019, “Visitation has surged almost 60 percent in a decade, leading to severe crowding at most park attractions. Between June 28 and Sept 4, 2017, the road to the Cadillac Mountain summit closed 49 times – for as little as 13 minutes, or as long as 90 minutes – due to gridlock congestion and public safety concerns.” We need to be proactive in order to promote smart, healthy, and sustainable tourism that also preserves Maine’s unique cultural heritage and pristine environment.

One has to wonder how the gigantic cruise ships that the Maine Office of Tourism promotes fit into this picture? According to the MOT website, part of their mission is to “encourage and oversee cruise ship tourism in the state.” Do the masses of tourists who emerge from the ships contribute enough to Maine’s well-being to warrant the cost of hosting thousands of cruisers who overwhelm our local streets? Only about 10% of these cruise tourists’ meager spending actually accrues as profits to the host businesses. Cruise companies actually offer passage on their mega-ships at under cost, making their profits from onboard spending. These floating resorts focus on keeping all spending “in-house,” leaving port just in time for dinner and drinks onboard. Local hotels and B&Bs can’t compete with their low costs. Registering as foreign businesses allows cruise companies to avoid paying taxes and obeying local labor laws. The ships pollute Maine’s environment with waste discharges, destroy fishing gear in their way, and leave their garbage behind in coastal communities and along our shores.

Some cruise ship advocates suggest that passengers will return as higher-spending land-based tourists. A demographic comparison of the Longwood Study commissioned by the State of Maine and the Bar Harbor research by the University of Maine suggests otherwise. Most of the jobs the cruise industry says are created in host communities are seasonal and low-paying. According to the Bangor Daily News, the pool of seasonal visa workers who normally provide a reliable labor force for Bar Harbor’s tourism industry dried up in March, when the federal H-2B program reached its limit. Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Martha Searchfield commented, “There are people who have come here year after year after year and worked in the same restaurants as cooks, as waiters, as whatever is needed, and they’re like family.”

Smaller cruise ships with berths for 500 or fewer passengers, in contrast, spend days in port and their passengers spend more than 5 times per day than those of their larger-ship counterparts, almost at the level of land-based tourists. Clearly, smaller cruise ships offer a much better value for Maine’s coastal towns.

Some communities suggest that perhaps hosting just a few huge cruise ships might be acceptable. The cruise companies, however, typically want to achieve an economy of scale. Royal Caribbean, for example, states in its annual report that it needs to develop “many ports to mitigate risk and enhance their negotiating power.” One retired executive of a major cruise ship company commented, “Of course. The jobs are all short-term and low-paying and often filled by migrant seasonal workers. We certainly never cared much about the communities. They are only about supporting an entertaining experience for the passengers and we tried to give them not what was there, but rather what they expected and wanted to find. Usually hats, trinkets, souvenirs and that sort of stuff. We did not care about the arts and culture that a community might find. Most lines actually own a lot of the shore-based concessions and services through shell companies.” Clearly they want to establish a beach-head, encourage local infrastructure investment, and grow from there. It is a slippery slope.

As witnessed in coastal communities around the globe, cruise tourism is often driven by these huge international profit-driven corporations with no concern about the long-term well-being of the coastal communities they frequent. One only has to look to Southwest Harbor, Charleston, Ketchikan, Bermuda, Bruges, and other coastal communities around the world to understand the urgency of proactively addressing this issue before it is too late.

We do not need to reinvent action strategies. Indeed, we can learn from our international colleagues who gathered in 2002 in South Africa to suggest solutions to over-tourism. This group issued a “Declaration on Responsible Tourism” to offer guidance to communities to devise filters to minimize the negative economic, social, and environmental impact of mass tourism. It suggests that those who embrace responsible tourism should contribute to the benefit of host communities’ economy, environment, and culture without impacting the success of local businesses. They must also act as responsible global citizens by following International Labor Standards and adhering to environmentally sound operating practices.

Coastal communities in Maine would be wise to embrace these principles. Indeed, the entire State of Maine should take advantage of this business opportunity to protect our quality of life, cultural heritage, and our fishing industry. It should adopt the brand of being the epicenter of responsible tourism, or “green tourism.” Janet Mills and the new administration should direct the Maine Office of Tourism to refocus its efforts to promote this brand rather than catering to the unbridled whims of those corporate interests that threaten our coastal communities, waterfronts, and marine environments. Her inspirational slogan for the state of Maine, “Welcome Home!” should serve as a battle cry to preserve our working waterfronts, our quality of life, our beautiful state of Maine, our home.

–David & Sally Wylie, Rockland, ME