Visits to the park are 2% below last year through August, yet other measures—from bus ridership to commercial coaches—point to a more complicated picture of how people are visiting MDI.

Carrie Jones

Sep 10, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by the Don & Beth Straus Center at Birch Bay Village.

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ACADIA NATIONAL PARK—Year-to-date visits to Acadia National Park is down in 2026 as opposed to last year’s numbers.

The National Park Service’s August report shows a combined total of 2,685,955 visits, a 2% decrease from this time last year.

For Mount Desert Island’s specific portion of the park, visits decreased 2.2% to 2,295,105 visits.

For context, the 2025 season overall had been the park’s busiest since the new counting method for visitation began.

Visits are not the same as unique visitors. The National Park System in Acadia counts the total number of times people enter. One person could visit many times in a year. This number is sometimes conflated with “visitors,” however, unique visitors are not counted. Since one person can visit the park many times in the year (or the week), the actual number of unique visitors to Acadia would be lower.

For all of 2025, the park had more than 4 million visits. In 2024 the total had been 4,079,318, but the 2025 numbers beat that record by a bit more than an additional 10,000 visits. The last year it had more than 4 million visits was 2021, according to data from the National Park Service.

The slight decrease so far in the season comes at a time when Bar Harbor—one of many towns on Mount Desert Island—tries to find a way to negotiate the ways between its highly seasonal tourism economy, congestion issues in those high-visitation months, and the needs of a year round community of just more than 5,000.

The park and state are also trying to alleviate some of the parking issues within the park. The Acadia Gateway Center in Trenton is meant to disperse information to travelers, encourage ridership on the Island Explorer Bus, and parking off the island. Acadia National Park’s Hulls Cove Visitor Center has a project that will almost double the amount of spaces there from 270 to 500.

So far in 2026, the amount of visits from the Island Explorer bus system increased 13.3% to 88,759. That bus system is fare-free, but is typically supported during its existence by park entrance fees, tax dollars in multiple area towns, donations, and grants.

The data from the National Park Service also illustrates a 34.7% increase in authorized commercial coach bus passengers (of 45 passengers per bus) and a decrease of 38.6% of 18 passenger busses in the MDI portion of the park.

The towns of Mount Desert Island are positioned next to Acadia National Park, which has been hosting 3.9-4 million visits a year since 2021.

The Maine Department of Transportation controls the one road onto and off the island. Bar Harbor has created a task force to try to balance the needs of tourism and those of the year-round population in that, the largest town, on Mount Desert Island. The town also voted to limit cruise ship disembarkations to no more than than 1,000 a day without fines. The most recent court decision on that change has found it to be partially unconstitutional.

Bar Harbor’s Sustainable Tourism Task Force has been working to suggest a plan to the Town Council to help balance the needs of residents and local businesses related to the tourism industry.

Last May the the number of people visiting Acadia and the Downeast region decreased according to a report shared at a Maine Tourism Conference in Rockport earlier that same month.

The Downeast and Acadia region—as defined by the state—covers all of Hancock and Washington Counties. There are not specific numbers pulled out for Mount Desert Island or its towns nor for Acadia National Park.

“DownEast & Acadia attracted 1,741,400 visitors in 2025, down 14.5% from 2024,” according to consultants at Downs & St. Germain Research.

In 2023, that number was 2,036,300.

“While 2025 was another successful year for the region, the data tells a much deeper story than just the record-breaking 4 million visits to Acadia National Park,” said Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Everal Eaton said in May. “What we are seeing is a fundamental shift in how people experience Bar Harbor and MDI. Even as statewide numbers showed a slight cooling, our local economy remained resilient because visitors are staying longer and engaging more deeply with our community.”

The numbers for 2026 will likely not be released until the spring of 2027.

Most of Maine’s visitors came from the Mid-Atlantic and New England with only 3.4 percent being international visitors. The average Maine visitor is white, married (or living together) and 48. The average annual household income of visitors to Maine is $117,200. Most visitors drove to the state. Most stayed in lodgings. Approximately 14% stayed in rental homes and 6% stayed in their own second home.

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The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Rick Osann Art.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE AND ADDITIONAL SLIDES

VisitMaine.com Study

Visitation data from NPS.

More visitation data from NPS

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