Hotels in Maine destinations among New England's priciest, but industry is hurting in other places
File Photo / Renee Cordes
At Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland, the least expensive room for a one-night stay this weekend was going for $578, according to the hotel's website on Wednesday morning.
Getting a hotel room in parts of Maine this month will cost you more than just about any other place in New England, a new survey says. And some of those other places may surprise you.
Bar Harbor placed No. 3 and Portland was No 4 in a ranking of 30 destinations across the region with the most expensive hotel rates for August, published Monday by website cheaphotels.org. Only the offshore Massachusetts tourist havens of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket ranked higher, at No. 1 and No. 2 respectively.
Bar Harbor’s average rate for a double room was $376 and Portland’s was $354, according to the survey. Rates on Martha’s Vineyard averaged $474, and on Nantucket, $421.
The travel site determined the averages from advance booking rates for three-star hotels and inns near a city center or beach between Aug. 1 and Aug. 31. The 30 communities sampled were ones with a substantial number of hotel rooms available to survey, cheaphotels.org said in a news release.
Also making the pricey poll were Kennebunk, No. 7 with an August average rate of $321; Ogunquit, No. 9, $286; Wells, No 11, $268; Old Orchard Beach, No. 13, $245; and Bangor, No. 17, $234.
Ranking lower than any of the Maine hotel hot spots were tony Newport, R.I., quaint Mystic, Conn., and — even lower at No. 22 — Boston. The surveyed rooms there are averaging $152 a night, cheaphotels.org said. Boston has typically ranked close to Portland in previous August surveys by the website.
While expensive summer prices in resort communities are nothing new, some of the extremes in the survey are unusual, said Matt Lewis, president and CEO of trade group HospitalityMaine.
“Boston is struggling,” he told Mainebiz in a phone interview Wednesday. While the hotel markets in other major urban areas have begun to recover nationwide, “you’re still seeing hundreds of dollars of difference” between the rates in New England’s largest city and elsewhere in the region.
Data last month from the American Hotel & Lodging Association bear out the difference.
Nationwide, Boston experienced the second-largest falloff in average revenue per room between pre-pandemic May 2019 and May 2021, the association found: a whopping 67%, from $184 to $61. Only San Francisco’s loss was higher.
Such big-city markets have been affected the most by the lack of business travel during the pandemic, and have been slowest to recover. Twenty-one of the largest 25 U.S. hotel markets remain in a "depression" or "recession" cycle, the AHLA said.
Lewis told Mainebiz, “Corporate travel is not back, and convention business is still hampered to say the least."
At the same time, leisure destinations and smallish metro areas have been able to recoup much of their lost revenue, especially as Americans have emerged from lockdowns and travel restrictions.
However, Lewis said Maine hotels were looking at more dismal prospects as recently as May.
HospitalityMaine members “were really worried about the summer,” especially because of the lack of cruise ship visits and travel from Canada.
With the loosening of public health restrictions, however, “the floodgates have been opened.” The state’s hotels are doing business nearly at pre-pandemic levels.
“I don’t know that we’ll match 2019, but we’ll come close,” Lewis said. “This actually has surprised me.”
Finding employees to support the surge in business remains a challenge, however.
“Bar Harbor is swamped this summer, but it’s so understaffed,” he said. “It’s pretty shocking. It’s not business as usual, anywhere, and I’m not sure it ever will be.”
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I hope these greedy hoteliers are happy to be pricing Mainers out of the market. We used to enjoy playing tourist in Portland - going to a show at the State Theatre, out to dinner, shopping, etc. No more. Staying home with Netflix now.
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