The story of the future of the cruise industry on Portland’s waterfront is all about conjecture right now. The projections of business going forward, and the estimates on revenues looking back, depend upon whom you ask. Also at issue is what “economic impact study” or “strategic action plan” holds the most water – all depend on complex numbers.
So, caveats aside, the question remains: To what extent will Portland’s working waterfront in the coming years include cruise ships?
What is knowable now: 43 cruise ships, exclusive of the Scotia Prince operation, docked in Portland in 2002 between May and September, and only 21 ships are slated to arrive this season.
When Regal Cruise Lines suspended operations in April, 11 dockings were cut from the current schedule. Also slashed this spring was the city funding for the marketing position at the Department of Ports and Transportation, a job designed to attract more cruise lines to book stops in Portland. (This action was not final as of mid-May.)
Arguably, without a strong marketing effort, Portland will fade from the cruise ship industry’s map. “If we take economic development through tourism seriously we have to be proactive and competitive in our marketing strategy, and we’re not there yet,” asserts Barbara Whitten, president of the Greater Portland Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, whose department budget may lose $30,000 in city funds.
Determining the dollar value each cruise ship passenger brings to Portland is a hard-to-pin-down number, however. According to Jeff Monroe, the city’s director of transportation, $300,000 was paid to the city in head tax, dockage, water and other service fees collected in 2002, when the City of Portland handled over 206,000 international passengers – including 41,185 cruise passengers and 165,000 MS SCOTIA PRINCE passengers. The “economic impact” last year, reports Monroe, was $40 million – defining “economic impact” as the amount of money spent directly on services including tugboats, water supplies and food.
Monroe further explains that this $40 million number comes from an “aggregate figure” of a “per person value of just under $200 per person” – a number tabulated by so many machinations, it barely leaves a paper trail. Each cruise’s tally of passengers and crew comes into play, for example, with “one passenger counting as half-a-crew member” in terms of out-of-pocket spending, and what a person takes out of his/her pocket goes to anything from snacks to T-shirts to museum fees. After the season of 2001, “all tangible numbers were added,” says Monroe, after talking to “everybody who had serviced the cruise ships.” And then, consultants “derived a formula from all these resources,” which resulted in an “extrapolation,” concluding that “every passenger spends $100 out-of-pocket.”
Meanwhile, a random-head physical survey done in the summer of 2002 by the Greater Portland Council of Governments has come up inconclusive. Last summer, surveyors paid with federal grant money, clipboards in hand, stopped tourists to ask 10 or so questions of around 1,000 people. But when the numbers were eventually crunched, the “study was inconclusive because not enough ships or people were counted,” according to Sandra Needham, whose marketing position at the port was just eliminated from the city’s new budget.
The port operation maintains a profitable bottom line, says Monroe. “I am not losing money on these facilities,” he explains. “I am subsidizing the infrastructure of the fishing industry, the Maine State Pier operations, including Casco Bay Lines – so when piers start to collapse, we fix them, and we pay for everything from electricity to security to snow removal.”
Fixing the cruise ship business, though, might be more complicated than restoring a collapsed pier. Brand new facilities and an even stronger marketing effort may be crucial to building Portland’s cruise ship market.
“Marketing is an investment in our future,” asserts Whitten. “For every dollar we spend in marketing, we get back two from the tourist.”
Other New England waterfronts will see overall growth in the tourism business this summer. The ports of Boston, Bar Harbor, Halifax and St. John anticipate many more cruise ships this year than last. “The entire New England region has moved forward with development of the cruise ship market, while Portland has remained stagnate,” explains Amy Powers, director of the CruiseMaine Coalition, which represents 12 paying destination members from Eastport to Kennebunkport and includes Portland.
So why are many ships skipping Portland? Apparently, the big-name and big- money cruise lines like Norwegian Cruise Lines and Princess Cruise Lines “don’t like us because we have substandard facilities,” says Monroe.
Meanwhile, the Ocean Gateway Project to reconstruct the Maine State Pier and former Bath Iron Works site is still alive. “Hopefully,” says Ben Snow, the port’s manager of marine operations, the permitting, design and engineering phase will be completed by the end of 2003. “Hopefully,” adds Monroe, construction will be completed in 2006.
At the heart of this issue – aside from money – is just how many people Portland wants to welcome via cruise ships. “Our capacity to date is 5,000 passengers a day,” asserts Snow, arriving at this figure by imagining that one ship docks at the pier, another one docks at the International Marine Terminal and a third, “megaship” moors offshore.
“The number of people is an issue,” offers Powers.
“If we don’t have an Ocean Gate, the cruise industry is pretty much gonzo in this city,” suggests Jerry Angier, of the Greater Portland Regional Chambers of Commerce’s Ad Hoc Committee, which was formed several years ago when an earlier Advisory Committee disbanded so the then-salaried marketing people could take over.
A modern cruise ship pier would accommodate modern cruise ships. “If we want 85,000-ton and 100,000-ton ships, big ships need a dock – they don’t want to tender,” contends Angier.
These same big ships may sail to Bar Harbor this summer, “but they have Acadia at Bar Harbor,” says Angier, noting the challenge in “selling Portland” to the traveling public.
At the core here is an unsolved issue: Exactly how much the Portland economy needs big cruise ships. Local residents may not welcome the noise and bustle the “megaships” bring, not to mention the potential environmental waste to the harbor. “But if you look at attractions, museums, tours, hotels and restaurants, there are not enough local people to fill up all these places,” worries Whitten.
Finally, when it comes to the projected income Portland might see from this summer’s season, it’s back to those elusive numbers. When asked, Monroe warms up his calculator and estimates that “direct fees to the city” will bring “$60,000 in revenue,” with a “total economic impact” of “$35-36 million.”
No one knows exactly how many people will arrive by cruise ship in Portland through October. And whatever that number might be, only an educated “extrapolation” can now estimate how much this year’s crowd will spend.