The Maine Oyster Trail is the first interactive and digital oyster trail in the U.S. and features 79 Maine oyster businesses which each offer one-of-a-kind experiences for visitors, like farm tours and direct sales. In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic had a major impact on Maine’s growing oyster industry. To adapt to market changes, many oyster farmers began to diversify their businesses by incorporating direct-to-consumer sales, farm tours, and shucking events. In response, Maine Sea Grant and the Maine Aquaculture Association began to rebuild the Maine Oyster Trail to drive coordinated tourism activity to these new markets and opportunities. With culinary activities and seafood remaining the most popular interest for Maine visitors, the Maine Oyster Trail presents an opportunity to introduce visitors to the craft of oyster farming, while building community engagement and social license for aquaculture operations.
In rebuilding the Maine Oyster Trail, we aimed to create a user-friendly interactive website that allows visitors to find oyster farms and businesses, based on desired type of experience offered and location in the state. We also endeavored to design a mobile, digital passport feature that encourages users to track their farm visits, log their experiences on the trail, and earn rewards for visiting farms.
We began this project by surveying Maine oyster farmers to learn what visitor experiences they were offering or interested in. We made partnerships with other related trail initiatives, like the Maine Beer Trail, to understand how successful incentive-based trails function. In addition to web design, we worked directly with the farms and businesses to understand their unique operations and the details that would need to be included for the virtual tools to meet their needs. We created partnerships with other incentive-based trail initiatives, like the Maine Beer Trail, and web design professionals. To generate interest and begin marketing the trail ahead of the web launch, we created social media accounts and generated photo assets of farms.
The new Maine Oyster Trail launched in June 2021, with a website (maineoystertrail.com) that includes a customizable trip planner and a mobile digital passport. At the end of the first season (2021), the new Maine Oyster Trail has 79 participating businesses, over 1500 registered users, and nearly 2000 passport check-ins at oyster businesses. The website and social media analytics allow us to track user engagements, like accounts created, farm check-ins completed, and rewards earned. Additionally, the user-generated data allows us to report back to participating farms and businesses to directly demonstrate value of the trail and inform business practices around new oyster tourism ventures. The re-launched Maine Oyster Trail balances the needs of farmers and visitors, creating new and engaging tourism opportunities for visitors, while increasing value and business opportunities for Maine oyster farms.