Consultant: Bar Harbor Faces Unique Challenges as Tourism Demand Surges Worldwide
Loved by Americans, Quiet in Winter: Consultant Unpacks Bar Harbor’s Unusual Tourism Rhythm
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Choco-Latté Café.
BAR HARBOR—What would happen if there were no tourists in Bar Harbor?
It seems a strange question when there is a popular national park that generates 4 million visits within the town’s borders.
Still, it’s one of the many questions that an Australian consultant is looking at as he continues to grapple with data about the island town (and larger trends) during the Bar Harbor Sustainable Tourism Task Force’s work.
As he presented mid-study, the consultant was adamant that he does not yet have all the data and that his conclusions might change or tweak, but he has noticed some things so far.
Bar Harbor’s quiet season? It isn’t typical.
At least that’s what the preliminary data has said in his draft situation and carrying capacity analysis.
Edmund Morris, founder of Equator-AI, a market intelligence platform based in Australia, zoomed into a meeting of the Bar Harbor Sustainable Tourism Task Force, Wednesday. The agency leading the task force in its work is J.E. Austin Associates. Morris is a sub consultant and according to The Conscious Traveler, “a former speechwriter turned data storyteller.”
The market systems and tourism consultant is in charge of a capacity analysis for the project.
Morris previously worked in a nonprofit sector, USAID, focused on poverty and economics.
“Our goal is to make quantitative insights universally available. That’s why we work on making data practical, fast and affordable. We do this by giving them insights about the future and impacts of travel and tourism today, so they can plan for tomorrow,” his company’s website reads.
THE GLOBAL INCREASE OF PEOPLE WHO CAN AFFORD TO TAKE VACATIONS
“The total number of people who can afford to take a vacation has gone up significantly,” Morris told the task force members, public, and planning staff as they gathered around long white tables in the council chambers in the municipal building on Wednesday.
The number of arrivals in the 1950s was 3 million; that’s now 671 million, his slide read.
The primary reason is rising income levels throughout the globe, he said. That does not mean everyone will take a vacation, but that more can afford to. That, unchecked, he said, puts pressure on destinations.
One sub-industry isn’t the cause of that shift, he’s said and written, but macro-economic growth, technological changes, and demographic changes partially is.
Maine itself has gone from 4.3 million to 15.27 million people visitors in the last 25 years, he said. The employees in the leisure and hospitality businesses has increased from 48,000 in 1990 to 69,000 in 2024.
This matters, he said, because most tourists follow other tourists to the same areas and do the same activities within those same areas.
“We’re a little sheeplike,” he said. “We herd.”
That compounds issues of congestion and anti-tourism sentiment is globally rising and particularly acute in Europe, he said.
“We’ve seen it globally,” he said, adding that it’s a relatively new trend that he believes the travel tourism industry has been slow to acknowledge or work on solutions to.
“We are seeing an explosion, particularly in the next 25 years, in the number of people who can afford to go on a holiday,” Morris said.
More people can afford to take a vacation than ever before and the universe of tourists is getting bigger, Morris said.
WHAT MORRIS HAS FOUND SO FAR IN BAR HARBOR.
Bar Harbor is loved, Morris said. But the love is not necessarily worldwide.
“It’s loved by Americans,” Morris said.
The town doesn’t get the international draw. There are patterns of travelers that have repeat visits. Most are from the eastern portion of the United States.
“You’re not susceptible to changes in foreign exchange currencies or even flight patterns,” he said. “You are a domestic tourism haven.”
And that means Bar Harbor has a dependable tourism industry that is solid and locked in.
He is learning more as he creates a data assessment for the carrying capacity analysis.
“We are not making conclusions at this point,” Michele McKenzie of J.E. Austin Associates said. It is more of a glimpse into what’s going on behind the scenes.
“There’s a lot more we have than is necessarily in the presentation,” Morris said. “Data in travel and tourism is complicated, disparate, and segmented. This makes it famously difficult to analyze.”
However, there’s some good news when it comes to Bar Harbor and data.
“Bar Harbor is one of the most data-bountiful places that I’ve ever had the privilege of working with,” Morris said and that includes much larger communities with more resources. “You guys have an unbelievable wealth of information.”
He also praised the town for taking steps already addressing and thinking about tourism.
“It really is genuinely impressive,” Morris said.
He also made a 3-D geospatial rendering of Bar Harbor, which is not finished. There will be the addition of restaurants and bars, which he called “gravitational pull” for tourists.
“It’s just been going up and up and up and it has been for a long time,” Morris said.
The increase is also correlating with the seasonality of data, he said. Most of the growth is taking place in the peak seasons. May, June, October and November are looking busier than they used to be, he said.
“The drops here are massive. It plummets,” he said. The degree of seasonality is unusual compared to the rest of the world. “It’s fascinating from a visitor point of view just how quiet the offseason looks.”
Another aspect that was unusual was COVID’s impact.
“COVID didn’t hurt here as much as every other place I’ve seen,” he said.
Another unusual thing he noticed is that lodging and restaurants aren’t always growing in tandem. However, he said, the current data he has shows that since 2022 they have been.
He’s used the town’s housing data, short-term rental data, available occupancy data, ferry and terminal data, marine resources data, parking and traffic data, and carrying capacity data and some data from Acadia National Park to make findings so far. He’s also used CrowdShift, Google Traffic and Google Places, PlacerAI, Maine Tourism Bureau, Maine Sales Tax, Maine Traffic Data, US National Tourism Data, and others as well.
COMPARING BAR HARBOR TO SCARBOROUGH
“There isn’t academic consensus around the concept of carrying capacity in travel and tourism,” Morris said.
A town’s carrying capacity typical means how many people it can support without harming the town’s resources. Those could be water, food, housing, sewer structures or other elements.
There’s also a belief amongst academics that there’s a point of tourism where resources and interest begin to degrade. Another belief, he said, is that there is an equilibrium of costs and benefits which may fluctuate between seasons and years.
“By combining the situational assessment with resident feedback, visioning lab, benchmarks, and scenario planning, we can begin to set ‘limits’ of key quantitative measures for Bar Harbor’s Goldilocks Zone.”
A Goldilocks Zone is considered a space where the area has much to offer visitors but is not over-touristed. It’s a term derived from scientific writing.
National Geographic explains, “Goldilocks Principle applies to the range of distances that a planet’s orbit can be from its star and maintain temperatures on the surface that are just right for liquid water. This range is known as the Goldilocks Zone.”
Morris’ presentation is a work-in-progress, McKenzie said. Some data is still missing though they don’t expect the general message to shift.
It is now on the town’s website with the caution, “The material in this presentation is a draft and subject to change. It was presented as a work in progress during the Sustainable Tourism Management Task Force Meeting on November 12, 2025. The analyses, data sets, models, and visualizations presented have not yet undergone full validation or quality assurance. Data collection and analysis are ongoing, and individual models may be refined further. Charts, statements, and other outputs are preliminary and may differ in the final version.”
WHAT DOES A NON-TOURISM TOWN IN MAINE LOOK LIKE?
What does a non-tourism town look like in Maine? Morris asked.
To find out, he compared a tourism town to a non-tourism town: Bar Harbor to Skowhegan.
“These are really different places,” he said. Skowhegan has twice the population and not much tourism at all. “It tells a story of a community with consistent economic outputs.”
Bar Harbor plummets in terms of economic outputs in the off season. That might make it harder for non-tourism industry to function than it would in Skowhegan. He said that auto repair or dentists could potentially not have enough of a population to justify being there.
Currently, there are three dentists in Bar Harbor year round. There is one auto shop. There is also a hospital, school system, and two science labs. Those industries don’t create product in quite the same way, but weren’t mentioned in this initial analysis.
Morris said tourism isn’t propping up the town during those quiet seasons. That pressure is not insignificant, he said.
Morris had questions to ponder. Would a longer tourism season help those non-tourism businesses? Will other businesses like the dentists or the auto repair shop be pushed out of the town by tourism businesses? That would decrease the quality of life for residents.
The average rate of occupancy in lodging is increasing, he believes. Understanding the number of rooms helps understand traffic pressures and other impacts. Similarly, the pressure of housing is “massive” during peak months.
OTHER
There is a resident survey underway about the definitions of sustainable tourism. More than 140 residents have responded so far to the sustainable tourism survey, which is open until December 4.
You can take the survey online here. Printed copies are available at the Municipal Building (93 Cottage Street).
There will be a visioning lab with “key organizations” next week. Community presentations begin next week with a presentation to the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce.
TASK FORCE COMMENTS
Vice Chair Enoch Albert asked Morris if he had a way of measuring the impact of tourism to the more rural areas of the town. Morris’ background is in rural areas and tourism impacts and he believes because of the amount of data the town has that should be possible.
John Kelly, a task force member who also works for Acadia National Park, cautioned against comparing Acadia to western national parks. This is due to visitors not necessarily looking for a sense of solitude. The park service manages expectations and visitors have more of a tolerance for congestion, Kelly said. The experience, he said, is still a very high quality experience. The park is managing a very different experience than the town of Bar Harbor.
One task force member asked if there might be a geospatial visual map of short-term rentals. That is possible.
Another member hoped for more of the data being created from residents who are not business-related.
Business data, Morris said, is the first ordering point because its comparable throughout communities. Water, emissions, and energy consumption patterns, environmental implications and other aspects are then layered on. Societal issues and demographic data is usually the end of the analysis.
Morris added, “The things that make the most money have the most data.”
PUBLIC COMMENT
During the initial time for public comment, Diane Vreeland asked where the consultants were located. They were calling from Halifax.
“You people are not here, so how do you know what’s going on?” Vreeland asked, saying she was shocked that the consultants weren’t in the room with them.
McKenzie said she’d be in town for four days next week and that they go back and forth between Canada and Maine.
Vreeland also wanted to know if the task force had seen an email she’d sent. McKenzie said committee members see the emails from the public. The consultants then create a slide presented at meetings specifying what is “considered to date” and what ideas are in a “parking lot.”
Vreeland was worried that the consultants were too focused on economic development and asked if they’d had experience working on an island with cruise ships. They had.
Later in public comment, Carol Chappell said it was important to gauge the year-round residents’ experience and the costs that property tax payers add to the budget that benefit the tourist industry. She asked where in the process the residents will have input other than the survey. She was curious about the vision lab on November 19.
McKenzie said public comment in meetings, another survey later on, and a problem and solution lab at a public workshop will all be opportunities for public input. There will be a draft strategy and public meetings where that is reviewed. The vision lab itself is targeted for community organizations but others can come.
Vreeland said, “I’m one of those locals who live ten miles out that’s tremendously affected with the tourism capacity of people in town and the traffic.”
She spoke of two gateways of town and that traffic was enormous. She was also worried about fires and drought and how to get everyone off the island in case of a catastrophic event. She also asked if the consultants had dealt with that previously.
Morris said that he’d worked with fire risk before. Within the scope of this project, they aren’t modeling evacuation plans, which is another area of expertise. They can, however, model the time it takes for rebuilding from a catastrophe.
McKenzie said that they’d previously worked on a case study of a fire in Jasper National Park in Canada. “There’s a lot we can bring to the table from that case study.”
Dave Mangs said he fully supported what was being done. “This is what the town needs. Decisions based on data.”
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
https://www.townhallstreams.com/stream.php?location_id=37&id=69171
https://www.barharbormaine.gov/DocumentCenter/View/8669/Presentation-Materials_Nov_12_2025
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
November 12 Task Force meeting Agenda
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Great job following this and thoroughly reporting it. People will come to Acadia National Park and they will bring their kids when school is out. Bar Harbor's legislators, Rep. Friedman and Sen. Grohoski should be called to talk about this. Bar harbor needs to tax visitors and their lodging somehow and needs to share the revenue with Trenton and other towns on MDI. A good chunk of that revenue needs to support a robust public transportation system, based at the Gateway Center and providing direct service to Ellsworth and SWH. Senator Collins needs to be called upon as chair of the US Senate appropriations committee to earmark more funds for the region's infrastructure and to persuade His Lowness King Donald The Last to spend every last penny of it.
This will probably end like our town’s engagement with the parking and traffic consultants— latch onto one idea (like paid parking from the parking plan) and ignore the rest (and often more important) take-aways.
In the end, it will be a waste of money. This town doesn’t care about managing tourism or the year round community.