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home > radio > maine news > news story Maine NewsNew England Touted as a Premier Cruise Destination
Maine is hoping to cash in on efforts to further promote New England as a premier destination for cruise ships. Representatives from the City of Portland this week welcomed more than 150 cruise line and port executives for the 10th Annual Canada-New England Cruise Symposium. John Henshawe, Director of the Maine Port Authority, says, "It's an industry that seems to be doing very well, even when the economy is at a relative low point." Henshawe believes vacationers are more frequently choosing to visit ports on the North American mainland, rather than opting to fly to destinations like Hawaii and the Caribbean. With the onset of this trend, Henshawe says, cruise line executives are looking at the Northeast with renewed interest: "In general, they have a very optimistic attitude about growth in the industry, growth in capacity, and opportunities for cruising in this region." He believes Portland is well-placed to benefit: "Portland has an opportunity here to grow its business. I think there's increased interest. There's a couple of cruise lines that are coming back here after not having been here for a few years." Henshawe declined to say which 2 cruise lines were planning to come back. Portland is certainly a city in need of revenue given the amount it's investing in its waterfront, says local author and commentator Colin Woodard. Woodard tackles the issue in the current edition of the Bollard, Portland's alternative news magazine. Woodard explains, "This $20 million Ocean Gateway terminal has been built, there's plans to actually add a berth that cruise ships can dock to at that terminal - there isn't now - which is apparently another $6 to $10 million ahead, and negotiations for tens of millions more investments in the adjacent Maine State Pier which is owned by the City, which is where cruise ships currently tie up." The Ocean Gateway was opened last month, five years late and $8 million over budget. Woodard says Portland spent this money without having any real idea of the income it would generate: "The city has never commissioned a real economic benefit analysis of cruise ship tourism in Portland." The man who helped manage the construction of the terminal disagrees. Portland's former Director of Transport Jeff Monroe was at the Symposium representing the port of Yarmouth in Nova Scotia. Monroe says, "One of the things that we saw consistently with a study that was done by the Maritime Administration, then there was a Bar Harbor study and a local study done, was that it was pretty consistent that every passenger was worth about $200 and not only their out-of-pocket spending, but also spending that the ship does. So if you got 50,000 passengers times, you know, $200 a passenger, that's an economic impact of about $10 million. However, Colin Woodard says only the Bar Harbor numbers were based on data collected in the field. He disputes the Portland numbers. He believes they're based on a flawed study from two years ago, which concludes that the industry generated $6.7 million worth of economic activity in Portland in 2005. Woodard explains, "They come from a University of Maine study done in 2006. I spoke with the author Todd Gabe who was quite open that he was never commissioned to go and collect survey data of what passengers in Portland were doing. So what he was forced to do, for lack of data, was simply to plug in the average figures for North America for passenger spending into his economic model, multiply it by the number of passengers we have, and hope that it was right." Woodard reports he contacted the consulting firm that generates all the data for North America - a Philadelphia-based group called Business Research and Economic Advisors - and they told him that Portland closer in economic model to Canadian ports like Halifax and St John. There the income generated by cruise passengers is estimated to be about half the North American average. "This suggests that not only have we never commissioned a study, but that it's very likely that the actual economic benefits of passenger spending are half of what all of our investments have been predicated upon. And that's a problem," says Woodard. Before any more money is invested, Woodard believes Portland should fork out the $10,000 or so it would cost to commission an economic study: "This is not the way to go about public policy and committing large amounts of public resources and taxpayer money in a city where we're now laying off firemen and police officers and closing library branches." A spokeswoman for the City of Portland could not comment on why a specific study on Portland was not commissioned before the Ocean Gateway was started 10 years ago. She said she preferred to concentrate on the future. The 138,000 ton Explorer of the Seas is due to dock in Portland on July 9th - the first of an estimated 31 cruise ships to visit the port this summer.
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