BIDDEFORD — People travel for a variety of reasons. For example, some are interested in ecotourism, others in sports tourism and still more in religious tourism. A new website is designed to attract a different type of tourist, the cultural tourist, to the twin cities of Biddeford and Saco as well as eight other communities in Maine that all have something in common.

Maine has 10 Main Street Maine communities and on Wednesday the Maine Development Foundation’s Maine Downtown Center launched the mainstreetmaine.org website. The interactive website highlights the best of the 10 communities, from restaurants and unique businesses, to events and activities.

“Our hope is that we increase visits from outside of the state in Biddeford and other Maine Street Maine communities,” Delilah Poupore said. Poupore is the executive director of the downtown revitalization organization Heart of Biddeford, director of the Biddeford’s Main Street program and project coordination of the mainstreetmaine.org website.

The website showcases the types of businesses and activities, like breweries and galleries, that cultural tourists are known to frequent. Under the Saco section, popular eateries like Rapid Ray’s and Fernleaf Bakery & Coffee House are featured as are the Saco Main Street Classic Car Show and the Sidewalk Arts Festival. Listings for Biddeford include Reilly’s Bakery, Biddeford Mills Museum and City Theater.

“People come to Maine to discover one-of-a-kind places, and Main Streets have them in a big way,” said Anne Ball, program director for MDF’s Maine Downtown Center. “We’ve learned from the Maine Office of Tourism that today’s visitors seek cultural, food and unique experiences. They want to know about world renowned museums in Rockland and Brunswick, the newest restaurants in Belfast and Augusta, great boutiques in Biddeford and Bath, cool breweries in Westbrook and Saco, and the best festivals in Skowhegan and Gardiner. This website provides one-stop shopping.”

Poupore said she became interested in attracting cultural tourists to Biddeford last year.

“I was at the national Main Street conference in 2017. I had attended a session with Abbe Levin (a cultural tourism consultant serving on the Maine Downtown Center Advisory Council) about cultural tourism.”

After the conference, the two met and brainstormed ideas about how to attract the cultural tourism demographic to the state’s Main Street communities, and the idea for the website to prominently display each areas’ cultural and historical places was born.

“These Main Streets have incredible cultural offerings along with great restaurants and local shopping. Each has their own unique sense of place — and they’re open year round,” Levin said.

Poupore wrote the grant application that garnered $9,500 from the Maine Office of Tourism, an equal match came from the Main Street communities — HOB’s share was not monetary but in-kind services provided by Poupore.

The grant was awarded in November, and Bonneville Consulting of Belfast, one of the Main Street communities, was hired to design the website. It took about six months to get everything in place for Wednesday’s launch, Poupore said.

The site provides a glimpse of what’s available in each of the downtowns, she said.

“We were advised by the Maine Office of Tourismto not have an exhaustive list,” Poupore said. “The site is full of advice and blog posts that recommend great food, coffee and brews as well as key cultural events and amenities.” It also directs people to each community’s Main Street website for additional information.

A major push is being made to use the website to attract visitors from outside of Maine.

“Several thousand dollars will pay for social media marketing in the Boston area,” Poupore said. By using Facebook, Twitter and Instragram she will be able to use each of the social medias’ analytic tools to see how many people visited the site and potentially how successful it was.

Another goal of the website is to brand the Main Street Maine communities together, which in addition to Biddeford and Saco include: Augusta, Bath, Belfast, Brunswick, Gardiner, Rockland, Skohegan and Westbrook.

“Once people get to their destination, they’ll look around and find a lot more to do, or even head to another one of the state’s Main Streets,” Poupore said.

“I think the site has potential to encourage travel to multiple Main Streets and give visitors a reason to extend their stay,” Levin said.

The Main Street program is designed to assist with downtown revitalization. It was developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1980, and is used in 44 states and over 2,200 communities.

— Associate Editor Dina Mendros can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 324, or [email protected].