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Rain, Not Recession, May Be Tourism's Deciding Factor

September 08, 2009 - PORTLAND -- Chris and Anne Lippincott have had lobster on their minds for nearly a year.

"We sat around one day and said, 'We want some lobster,'" Chris Lippincott said. "We thought: Maine."

The couple from Las Cruces, N.M., who own a home construction business, started planning their Maine vacation last October. Their two-week trip has taken them to the American Folk Festival in Bangor and along the coast from Bar Harbor to York.

There's been plenty of lobster. They ate it for eight days in a row and took a short break before getting back on course.

On Thursday, they wandered around Portland's Old Port with plans for antiquing and a stop at the Comedy Connection later. Their trip is winding down this Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end to Maine's summer tourism season.

Wet, dreary weather hurt many in the tourism industry early this summer, and the past month's better weather isn't expected to make up for the lost business, observers say.

"We can't make it up. I wish we could, but we can't," said Vaughn Stinson, chief executive officer of the Maine Tourism Association.

He expects that business is down among his members by 12 to 15 percent, on average. He said the weather has done more damage than the recession.

The recent sunny weather is a welcome change, said Meg Jones, owner of Maine Sailing Adventures, which offers cruises on the windjammer Frances from Portland's waterfront. If the weather cooperates, sailing could continue until Halloween.

"The (Labor Day) holiday weekend is looking gorgeous," she said. "Business should be bustling."

Southern Maine and its coastal areas may have fared better than those farther up the coast and inland. Stinson said 38 percent of Maine's tourists come from Massachusetts, so areas closer to the Bay State fared better than others.

"Down East and interior Maine, they had a hard time," he said. "Some of the folks are in dire straits."

Tourism is Maine's largest economic sector. It accounted for 176,633 jobs and $531 million in tax revenue in 2006, the most recent year for which such statistics are available. Tourists spent $6.7 billion in Maine that year.

Business quiets down a bit at the end of August and beginning of September. It picks up again later in September and early October, as foliage fans – often older visitors who travel on motor coaches – start arriving. Columbus Day weekend is typically the biggest holiday weekend for the lodging industry.

Around Labor Day, hotel occupancy of 50 to 60 percent is pretty good, said Greg Dugal, executive director of the Maine Innkeepers Association.

Looking forward, bookings look good for the first dozen days in October, Dugal said. September weekends look good but weekdays are sketchy.

Stinson said fall bookings for motor coaches look OK, but people aren't making their plans as far in advance as they normally would.

Labor Day weekend could provide a real boost for campgrounds. The summer for that industry was "relatively OK," given the weather and the recession, said Rick Abare, executive director of the Maine Campground Owners Association.

Some campgrounds expect to finish even with last year, which wasn't a particularly good year, and some southern and coastal members may even be ahead, he said.

The thinning of crowds around Labor Day figured into Grace Spence's planning. A technology specialist for the U.S. Department of Justice, Spence and two friends who are also from Washington, D.C. – Mitchell Ho and Youhong Wong – drove up to Maine, picking up Spence's daughter, Susana Li, from New York along the way.

On Thursday, the day after their arrival, they snapped photographs at Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth. "Beautiful! It's breathtaking," Spence exclaimed.

Lobster – along with Acadia National Park, Camden and Freeport – was high on the group's agenda. They were headed off to the Lobster Shack at Two Lights in Cape Elizabeth.

Li had already figured out that she favors lobster rolls over lobster in the rough. "I'm not going to work my way through that whole mess again," she said.

The Low family of Pine Plains, N.Y., on a four-day trip to Maine, visited friends in Bath as a last jaunt before 7-year-old Spencer starts the second grade next week.

Spencer and her parents – John Henry and Constanza – took a ride on the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad in Portland before heading to their next destination: a place with lobster rolls.

"We're here to increase the demand for lobster," Constanza Low said.

The Lows also enjoyed the ocean and L.L. Bean, where Constanza Low said they did their part to support Maine's economy.

She'd like to see a moose as well, but that wasn't as definite as their dinner plans, which involved the possibility of – what else? – lobster.

By ANN S. KIM, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, September 4, 2009


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