With 2023 winding down, Acadia National Park will finish the year with fewer than 3.9 million visits.
The number is less than either of the previous two years, but still higher than any annual tally prior to 2021. The park had a record total of more than 4 million visits in 2021 and topped 3.97 million visits last year.
The trend of greater numbers of tourists coming to Acadia, and to national parks throughout the country, dates back to the fall of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic caused tourism to plummet worldwide that summer, but it sprang back in Acadia that fall as more people sought outdoor adventures as a way to reduce exposure to the virus.
Everal Eaton, head of Bar Harbor’s Chamber of Commerce, said weather is always a factor when it comes to tourists visiting the town and the adjacent national park. Despite the relatively high turnout for the year, the months of May, June, August and October produced more rain in coastal Hancock County than they had in several years, according to National Weather Service data.
Eaton said that the tourist season this year felt more like 2019, both in terms of consistency and revenue for the Chamber’s member businesses. The park had an estimated 3.4 million visits that year, close to its prior annual record of 3.5 million total visits in 2017.
Eaton said housing and staffing for employees during the town’s busy tourist season, which generally runs from late May through the end of October, continues to be a challenge. Though the post-pandemic economy has been bringing more tourists to Acadia, it also has made housing scarce in Maine and nationwide, but state and local officials have sought to ease the crunch by changing development restrictions to allow more affordable housing construction.
“We’re optimistic about what next year might bring,” Eaton said.
The park’s estimated total visits through the end of November was 3.85 million, or about 93,000 visits behind where it was at the end of November 2022. The National Park Service has not yet released visitation estimates for this month, but Acadia has averaged fewer than 20,000 visits each December over the past three years.
