Last year, I wrote a series for the Portland Press Herald exploring how Maine communities can balance the costs and benefits of cruise ship tourism, an issue that had already exploded into public controversies in Bar Harbor, Rockland, and several smaller ports.
One focal point was how much cruise ship passengers actually spend ashore, particularly in Portland, where the only existing study was rather a mess, probably inflating the numbers by 100 percent.
That issue came up again this month with the release of a state-sponsored study of passenger spending that found each spent not $109 to $110, but rather $61-and-change. I wrote about this in Monday’s Press Herald, with reaction from municipal officials and response from the state’s cruise industry office and the author of the previous studies in Maine. Hope you enjoy.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine's Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.