For well over a century, tourism has been one of the State of Maine's major industries.

In 2020, we were lucky enough to be considered, by many, to be one of the only "safe" places to go on vacation.  This was presumably due to the many socially-distant outdoor activities you could participate in.

Of course, in 2021, we saw huge numbers of people flock to the state.  Basically, anyone who really needed to get away, but was not yet ready to hop on a plane to jet away to the Caribbean.

It appears, for a variety of reasons, that trend continued in 2022.  People spent MASSIVE amounts of money in our state in 2022.

According to an article in Maine Biz, visitors to our state spent $8.6 BILLION in 2022.

While the number of visitors were slightly down from 2021, the people who did come spent way more money.  The article explains that the number of visitors were down by just under 2%, but the people who did come to the state spent about 10.1% more than in 2021.

Kevin Crosby, Unsplash
Kevin Crosby, Unsplash
loading...

According to state economic experts, one of the reasons why the amount of money spent jumped was because the people who did visit the state ended up staying longer than they had in previous years.  It makes sense.  The longer you stay, the more money you are going to spend!

All that money spent did more than just support the bars, restaurants, hotels, shops, etc, it also supported thousands of workers.  About 150,000 people had jobs in the Maine tourist trade last year.  That's about 11% of the state's 1,372,000 people!

Additionally, the money brought in offset about $2,000 in taxes for each household in the state.

So, the next time you get frustrated with our friends from Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Quebec, etc,  keep in mind how much they help the economy of our state.

10 Must Visit Maine Attractions According To A ChatBot

We asked the ChatGPT artificial intelligence to suggest some lesser known attractions that needed to be on our Maine "bucket list". Here's what it came up with!

More From B98.5