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Contact:

Amy Powers, Director

CruiseMaine Coalition

(207) 310-0998 or Director@CruiseMaineUSA.com

 

CruiseMaine and tourism partners invite cruise passengers to return for a land based vacation by providing them with a free night's stay

 

The CruiseMaine Coalition along with associated partners have recently launched a direct marketing campaign designed to entice cruise ship passengers to return to Maine for extended land based vacations.

The FreeStayMaine program provides cruise ship passengers with a voucher that is redeemable in future visits and is endorsed by CruiseMaine as well as the Maine Innkeeper’s Association, the Maine Office of Tourism, the Maine Port Authority, the Greater Portland & Casco Bay Region, The Mid-Coast, the Down East & Acadia, and The Maine Highlands tourism regions.

This program will provide unique opportunities for passengers to receive a minimum of one free night's stay. Approximately 30 Maine lodging establishments in a variety of locations have already created special packages available for passengers to view online and take immediate advantage of.

The State of Maine expects to host 118,000 cruise ship passengers to varied Maine ports beginning May 8th, 2006 and ending on November 2, 2006.

          

The program partners feel there is feasible supporting information for such a program based on the article "The Likelihood of a Passenger to return to a Visited Port" The Case of Bar Harbor, Maine authored in 2002 by the University of Maine’s Department of Resource Policy and Economics and  CenTRO (the new Center for Tourism Research and Outreach) and published last year in the Journal of Travel Research.

This research indicates:

·          1/3 or 33.9% of the 598 respondents indicated that they expect to return to Bar Harbor within the two years following the cruise ship visit. It was estimated that 32,993 cruise ship passengers from the 2002 cruise season returned to Bar Harbor between the fall of 2002 and 2004.

·          36% of the respondents indicated that they had annual household incomes of $100,000.00 or more.

It is also important to note that the average respondent lives in a US city or town that is located app. 1,297 miles from Bar Harbor.  This is a captive market that visits Maine from non-traditional market source areas such as Texas, California, Ohio and Florida.

 

    
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