Bar Harbor Task Force And Consultants Begins 16-Month Tourism Strategy
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BAR HARBOR—The Sustainable Tourism Task Force met the consultants who will lead them for the next 16 months or so as Bar Harbor tries to gather multiple thoughts, needs, and opinion to create a tourism strategy.
Task force members greeted J.E. Austin Associates’ Michele McKenzie and Ben Nussbaumer at the task force’s second meeting, August 18. The consultants will guide the task force and assist the town in its process.
The task force is meant to give the town council recommendations about the town’s future as it relates to tourism.
“It’s very helpful that the municipal government is involved,” McKenzie said of the process, which typically does not involve municipalities but outside agencies commissioning reports. It’s expected to cost $140,000 in this fiscal year.
WHERE THE TOWN STANDS
At least one task force member wanted to know from the consultants how Bar Harbor was in relation to other towns when it came to looking at sustainable tourism.
“Are we behind the curve” or ahead of it, task force member Jim Glavine, who is retiring soon from Oli’s Trolley, asked about the town’s sustainable tourism efforts.
McKenzie said that the town has already dealt with difficult decisions and discussions about short-term rentals and cruise ship visitations.
“You’ve been into it already,” she said.
Those are some of the most difficult discussions communities have around sustainable tourism, she said, referencing the stricter limits on cruise ships coming to town as well as vacation rental caps, and the moratorium on new lodgings (as well as a moratorium on extensive renovations of existing lodgings).
“In that regard, you’re ahead,” McKenzie said and added that now is the time for strategy. It’s time for the town to think “where is this going? Where do we want it to go?”
Nussbaumer said, “It’s evident that tourism is important to the community and a way of life, but that it is also a stressor…. In other communities that fact is often ignored, that there are challenges that you face that may not be shared equally. This is a different set of challenges, but I know in many ways the challenges are not unique; they’re acute.”
GLOBAL TOURISM TRENDS AND BAR HARBOR
Acadia National Park has currently hosted approximately 3.9-4 million visits (not visitors) each year since 2021, which is up from 3 million in 2016 and an estimated 2.3 million visits in 1990.
The Mount Desert Island region is not isolated when it comes to having increased tourism since the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the first quarter of 2025, international tourist arrivals had increased by 5% according to World Tourism. The non profit said that these are more than the pre-pandemic numbers by approximately 3%. Those tourists contribute approximately $11.7 trillion to the global economy and 371 million jobs. The fastest increasing sector is in the Middle East (44% growth) and then Africa (16% growth) from pre-pandemic levels.
In the United States, they said, “over 119 million Americans traveled during 2024’s holiday season…. Americans spent over $900 billion on leisure travel alone…. Total travel market expected to reach $3.1 trillion by 2034.”
For Bar Harbor, the question becomes how tourism impacts residents’ quality of life and what strategies the town would like to focus on when it comes to tourism.
The goal of the 13-member group is to have a clear vision for Bar Harbor’s tourism future, Planning Director Michele Gagnon previously said. She expects that will take 12-18 months.
“It is about what’s best and wanted by the community as a whole,” she said.
On Monday, like Gagnon, McKenzie also stressed community engagement and having diverse voices involved in that same timeline.
The task force is to bring a report to the town council about sustainable tourism. What exactly will go in that report will be determined by the process. Its members were appointed by the Bar Harbor Town Council in April. The town council had approved the task force during its January 21, 2025 meeting.
What sustainable tourism looks like for Bar Harbor, what Bar Harbor’s definition of sustainable tourism is, and how Bar Harbor can impact tourism when Acadia National Park draws recreational visits each year and the Maine DOT controls the road onto the island may be some of the questions the town tries to answer.
In Bar Harbor, the town council has spoken about tourism in ways that have made papers since at least 2019 and sustainable tourism was discussed at the town council’s goal setting at the time.
At the July meeting, it was said that of the task force’s next steps will be to understand and define “sustainable tourism,” and what tools the task force can use to engage community to help define its future.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
However, during the meeting there was some discussion about aspects of the process including the consultants’ potential interviews with 30-or-so community members ahead of the process in the zero phase (outlined in the images above). Multiple staff had picked those community members to potentially answer the consultants’ general questions about the town. However, some task force members worried about not knowing who those community members were or how they were specifically chosen.
Since those community members were not listed by name, Task Force member John Kelly, who is involved in multiple town committees and works for Acadia National Park, said he was worried that local media would call it a “secret list” and then it would become a distraction to the task force’s job.
His concerns echoed some others on the task force, while some members spoke in support of keeping the names private, saying that it’s understandable that some people are hesitant about speaking on the record about the town in the political climate of 2025.
Gagnon said her department and consultants would rethink this more casual approach that normally helps consultants understand a community by speaking with multiple members of it prior to endeavoring with the true public engagement portion of the work, a practice which is standard in the consulting world according to McKenzie and Nussbaumer. On Tuesday morning, the consultants sent emails cancelling the meetings and stopped scheduling them.
The consultants had begun doing similar interviews with the task force members themselves.
Two members of the public attending were concerned about computerized surveys involved in the outreach not meeting the older populations’ needs and input and one also worried that paper surveys in the town office might not be easy for younger families who were potentially too busy to access them.
Bar Harbor has traditionally had a high response in its surveys to the public, generally sending out mailings, QR codes, having dedicated and boosted social media posts, and sharing with local media to engage more respondents.
The town often has paper copies of surveys at the town hall, its own events, farmer’s markets, and at the Jesup Memorial Library during its public outreach. The town’s recent Safe Streets public outreach had well over 500 interactions as did its 2035 Comprehensive Plan outreach.
Back in 2021, 459 responded to a vacation rental survey. A 2022 housing survey received 751 responses.
NEXT STEPS
McKenzie and Nussbaumer will talk to each individual task force member prior to the next meeting, which is scheduled for September 10 at 4 p.m.
Task force member David Woodside wanted to clarify that the task force’s plan is adopted by the council and not a town vote, but it is generated through the process with public input.
“This is also different from the comp plan because there’s no legal binding,” Kelly said.
“I’m not interested in working on anything that can’t move forward,” Gagnon said, calling that work demoralizing after so much effort. She referenced the town’s work with the comprehensive plan as proof that the town is interested in live documents that can be implemented and that involve public participation.
Disclosure: I was one of the community members asked to talk to the consultants about Bar Harbor. I had not done so.
Kennebec Street Road Closure – Thursday Morning (8/21/2025)
From the town office: “Kennebec Street will be temporarily closed from 8:00 AM to 12 noon on Thursday, August 21, to accommodate contractor equipment in the street to install concrete steps in the vicinity of 12 Kennebec Street. Street parking may be affected. Please contact Public Works at 288-4681 with any questions or comments.”
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Taskforce Contact
You can email the taskforce: STMTaskForce@barharbormaine.gov.
The Planning Department staff are also included in the group email.
Sustainable Tourism Management Task Force bylaws
The task force’s page on the town’s website.
Comprehensive plan executive summary
https://banff.ca/DocumentCenter/View/17978/2025-Banff-Community-Plan—Amended-July-28-2025-Final-PDF
Moratorium Talks: What Has a Place in Bar Harbor?
To read the packet of materials included with the agenda.
To watch the meeting on Town Hall Streams.
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