New England · park

What a trip to Bar Harbor costs

A week in Bar Harbor for eight people works out around $18,600 before flights — $728 a night for a place sleeping four, scaled for the group, plus $87 per adult per day for food. From Chicago and New York it is cheaper for a family of four to drive than to fly.

A coastal town on Mount Desert Island and the main gateway to Acadia National Park. Cadillac Mountain, inside the park, is the island's high point at about 1,530 feet.

with children okadults-only trip goodstroller / limited mobility poor

What a week costs

Lodging and food only. Seven nights, whole-property rental, all fees in.

Group	Lodging	Food	Total	Per person
4 people	$5,100	$2,440	$7,530	$1,880
8 people	$13,700	$4,870	$18,600	$2,320
12 people	$18,800	$7,310	$26,100	$2,170

Note the per-person column does not simply fall. A place sleeping four is the efficient unit; going to eight means changing property class, which costs more than double. Past eight it improves again — each additional person adds roughly half what they did over the first jump. The expensive step is condo to house, not the people you put in it.

How Bar Harbor compares

Bar HarborNew England median of 3Parks median of 5All destinations median of 40

Nightly lodging for a property sleeping four, month by month. Medians are taken across the seeded destinations in each group, so they are the middle of that group rather than any one place.

Averaged across the year, Bar Harbor runs $463 a night for a property that sleeps four. That is 57% above the median for all 40 destinations in the library ($295), making it the 9th most expensive of 40 destinations. Against its own kind it is 14% above the typical park ($407), the 2nd most expensive of 5 parks.

Its season swings 138% between its cheapest and most expensive months, against 87% for the typical park. Timing matters more here than it does for most parks.
The same week costs $2,950 more in July than in January on lodging alone, before anyone has bought a flight.
Although it is more expensive than the typical park across the year, it undercuts one in Mar, Apr.
Within New England (3 destinations here), it is 39% above the regional median of $333 a night.
Driving beats four seats from Chicago and New York. The longest of those is Chicago — 1,112 road miles and 18.1h each way, and only $29 cheaper than four seats — thin enough that most groups would fly anyway.
The cheapest seven nights of the year fall in January, at $2,146 for the whole property — $5,096 for the same week in July.
The sharpest single step is between October and November: moving the same week across that line changes the lodging bill by $2,280.
The closest thing to it on price is Yellowstone / Bozeman, MT, another park-gateway town: $18,179 for a week for eight against $18,587 here, 2% apart.

When to go

Bar Harbor is at its most expensive in July and cheapest in January — a 138% swing on the same property.

Month	Per night, sleeps 4
January	$307
February	$307
March	$307
April	$307
May	$500
June	$500
July	$728
August	$728
September	$632
October	$632
November	$307
December	$307

Getting there

The two halves are not priced the same way, which is the whole point: a seat costs per person, a car costs the same whatever the headcount.

	Flying		Driving
From	Round tripper person	Each wayhours	Round tripper car	Each wayhours	Cheaperfor four
Atlanta	$443	5.2h	$1,921	20.5h3 days	flying
Chicago	$430	4.9h	$1,691	18.1h2 days	driving
Dallas	$496	8.2h	$2,897	30.7h4 days	flying
Denver	$509	8.5h	$3,133	33.3h4 days	flying
Los Angeles	$587	10.4h	$4,568	48.5h5 days	flying
New York	$374	3.6h	$682	7.8h	driving
Seattle	$571	10.0h	$4,261	45.2h5 days	flying
Phoenix	$560	9.7h	$4,071	43.2h5 days	flying

Drives over ten hours are shown in days as well: nobody drives that in one go. The nights on the road are not counted here, so a long drive is cheaper on this page than it would be in life. All fares are modeled from distance — no published average covers this airport. Driving uses the IRS standard mileage rate, which includes running costs, not just fuel.

See all 5 parks in the library →

Compare Bar Harbor against other destinations →

Where these numbers come from

Lodging is indexed from the US federal per-diem schedule (GSA) for this county, calibrated against real rental listings. Food uses this location's own federal meal tier. Fares come from the DOT Consumer Airfare Report where that airport pair is published, and from a model fitted to 2,089 real DOT fares otherwise. Everything here is an estimate for planning, not a quote — check real prices before booking.