Salem and the Small-Town Tourism Trap

[SOUND OF LIVE SAXOPHONE AND RECORDED MUSIC PLAYING FROM LOUDSPEAKERS]

JOHN ANDREWS: Standing where we’re standing, there is a clown playing saxophone. There’s really well-done Hocus Pocus cosplayers. There’s a zombie bride.

TARIRO MZEZEWA, HOST: Peak Travel producer Michaela Winberg is on Essex Street, the pedestrian plaza in downtown Salem, Massachusetts.

JA: I fell in love with October because I just loved walking around.

[SOUND OF PEOPLE YELLING]

TM: John Andrews helps manage the influx of tourists that visit Salem around Halloween.

JA: It’s very nice to know that there’s a place that you can come and be you, and we’re like that all year. It’s just hyper-accelerated in October, you know?

[MUSIC]

TM: For a long time, Salem was best known for the Witch Trials of 1692, when hundreds of women were accused of being witches, tried, and some were killed. That dark history made the city the backdrop for spooky books, TV shows, and movies, like The Crucible, Bewitched, and Hocus Pocus.

These days, Salem is known for something else: becoming overrun with tourists every year around Halloween. In September and October of 2024, 1.4 million tourists visited downtown Salem. To put that in perspective, the town has just 44,000 residents. This has caused issues around the town. Streets are clogged with traffic.

[SOUND OF TRAFFIC, CARS HONKING]

MICHAELA WINBERG, PRODUCER: What you’re hearing is the sound of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the main street that goes into Salem. It is car, after car, after car, after car.

TM: You can’t get down the street, walk into a shop, or sit down at a restaurant.

MW: Every brunch restaurant has a line that is, like, 30 people long. It’s absolutely insane.

TM: And it’s affecting a lot of Salem residents.

MW: What is it like when you step outside your house in the middle of October on a Saturday?

MILO MARTINEZ: Oh my god, on a Saturday? Why would I leave the house? I wouldn’t leave the house on a Saturday! [Laughter]

[SOUND OF EERIE MUSIC]

TM: And yet, some say residents shouldn’t complain about tourism, because it’s a boon to the local economy. Plus, it’s fun… isn’t it?

[SOUND OF A WITCH LAUGHING, GLASS BREAKING]

[THEME MUSIC]

This is Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa. In this episode, we explore how a small town like Salem deals with a flood of tourists in just one month of the year. And we ask: Is it really worth it for the people who live there? That’s after the break.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

[SOUND OF THE ADDAMS FAMILY THEME SONG PLAYING OVER SPEAKERS, ACCOMPANIED BY LIVE SAXOPHONE]

Michaela visited Salem in October last year, three weeks before Halloween.

MW: When you go to Salem, Massachusetts, downtown, it’s really a pleasant place. It’s right on the water. The downtown is really, really pedestrian friendly, which is something I always look for in places that I want to travel to. It intersects with a street or, like, a plaza called Derby Square. And there’s all these vendor tents. It’s, like, kind of like a big street festival during the month of October.

[SOUND OF INDISTINCT CHATTER]

[MUSIC]

TM: Salem is a small city, about 18 square miles. And the neighborhood that’s popular with tourists is much smaller — just a mile wide. On any given Saturday in October, the main street is sure to be packed. It makes it pretty impossible for anyone to get around. Plus, it’s expensive.

MW: I couldn’t stay in Salem. I work for public radio you guys, I don’t got it like that. It costs like $700 a night to stay in Salem in October in some of the more popular hotels. So I stayed in a town that was like 30 minutes outside Salem.

TM: And then there’s the traffic. Massive jams all across downtown, and just 4,000 parking spots for residents and visitors.

MW: I drove to a train station nearby and parked at the train station and then took the train into Salem instead of driving and trying to park because it’s just, it’s impossible.

TM: There on the crowded plaza, Michaela met two sisters who traveled with their mom from Kansas City. They wanted to get a taste of New England in the fall.

TOURIST 1: I’ve always wanted to go to the East Coast to see the leaves. And they decided that it would be a nice thing to do before I get any older.

TM: They were excited to experience all the witchiness, even wearing matching witch hats as they walked around.

TOURIST 2: Salem has such history, from the witch trials and seeing the architecture and seeing, even the industry that’s built up around the witches, the witch trials going into all the other supernatural things.

TM: They didn’t have to go far to learn the history of the witch trials. One museum is just a few blocks from where Michaela met the tourists.

MW: [Laughter] Can I press it?

RACHEL CHRIST-DOANE: Do you want to press the button? [Laughter]

MW: I want to!

[SOUND OF A WITCH LAUGHING]

WITCH PRESENTATION: Listen carefully my pretties. Frightening tales of a sinister creature, deep in the forest. Capable of brewing potions over a bubbling cauldron…

TM: The 1692 Salem Witch Museum tells the story of the Witch Trials through life-sized wax figures with recorded voices. It also covers how the idea of the witch has evolved in pop culture since then. We’re currently listening to the classic witch, popularized by The Wizard of Oz. Green skin, broomstick, the whole nine.

WITCH PRESENTATION: Time goes on and perceptions evolve. My role is different now. My legacy altered, but I suspect my story is not yet done.

MW: Yes!

RCD: Yeah, right? [Laughter]

So my name is Rachel Christ-Doane. I’m the director of education at the Salem Witch Museum.

TM: She says running the museum in October is pure chaos.

[MUSIC]

RCD: Salem just kind of gets busy in a way that cannot be described, right? You almost have to see it to get it. At the Salem Witch Museum, we start to see weekends where we’re sold out, like, halfway through the day, and then it starts to get earlier and earlier.

TM: The thing is, this is a pretty niche small-town museum that wasn’t designed for so many tourists to visit over the course of four to eight weeks. Rachel sees this in their online ticketing system.

RCD: It’s kind of like Taylor Swift tickets now. It’s kind of unbelievable. What we now see is every year, tickets for the day go live at midnight, people log on en masse at midnight and crash the website.

[SOUND OF A COMPUTER GLITCHING AND CRASHING]

TM: And on the floor, things can get… messy.

RCD: Some of the horror stories that tourism workers will have is particularly when alcohol starts to kind of get into the mix. We’ve had our fair share of people throw up here and, you know, things like that, and we’ve all cleaned it up.

MW: Oh my god, you too?

RCD: Yep.

TM: Even though Rachel’s job is harder throughout October, she appreciates what the large number of visitors means for the museum.

RCD: Most museums or, you know, whatever, sites of public history can only dream of the visitation that Salem has. You know, one of the biggest issues in public history is getting people to come to you, and in enough numbers that you can sustain yourself. But, every year it gets crazier.

TM: In the last 10 years, the number of tourists visiting Salem in October has nearly doubled. And the visitors aren’t just coming around Halloween anymore — their migration is stretching into September and November too.

RCD: Of course we want it. But at the same time, we can’t, the city can’t control it. So it is that, like, two-headed beast.

TM: All the residents Michaela met said at least some part of their lives is taken over for the entire month of October.

TY HAPWORTH: Imagine every year you throw the coolest house party you could ever throw, and everybody comes to it, and it’s, like, fun. But at the same time, you actually have to live your life on a daily basis. You have to, still have to go to work. You still have to take your kids to school.

TM: Ty Hapworth lives a few doors down from the Witch Museum, in the heart of downtown. He and his wife Micah moved to town a decade ago to start their family.

TH: To be fair, we knew this was a Halloween town. And this was a place that people came to experience Halloween and October was busy.

TM: But he says since then, it’s gotten worse.

[MUSIC]

TH: We try to lean into it and just, you know, understand that this is sort of like, like a blizzard and that you’re sort of stuck in your house and there’s craziness happening outside, and you make sure that you’ve got your shopping done before the tourists come in.

TM: For one thing, Ty says he has to budget a lot more time when doing something like picking up his kids.

TH: We do feel that frustration of, like, I got to get my kid to soccer. It should take me 10 minutes to get there. It’s going to take me over an hour.

TM: And then there’s the issue of tourists being disrespectful. Some of them are trashed, and they generally treat the place like it’s a party venue, rather than a place where people live. Ty even installed a rope to keep people from sitting on his stoop.

And that’s not the only issue that has residents upset.

[SOUND OF A GENERATOR RUNNING]

SUSIE MOULTON: My name is Susie Moulton. I’ve lived in Salem for 14 years, and I live on the backside of this beautiful Salem Common.

TM: Michaela met Susie at the Salem Common, a public park in her neighborhood.

SM: I’m 78 years old, and the older I get, the less patient I am. Just think, would you like to go out of your backyard and be greeted by 200,000 people, new people, every Friday, Saturday, Sunday?

TM: Susie is not a fan of tourism. Especially because it takes over the park with a giant street fair.

[SOUND OF INDISTINCT CHATTER]

MW: It’s turned into, like, a huge vendor fair for the entire month. So that’s, like, small businesses selling their art or their, you know, clothes or purses out of tents. There is, like, fair food, so, like, funnel cakes and sausage and all this stuff. And then in the later weeks in October, there are, like, carnival rides that get built up.

SM: So imagine that you’re Coney Island and you have hotdog trucks and french fry trucks and ice cream trucks and fried dough trucks. And that’s what we have with neon lights. They’re supported by generators because there’s not enough power source to plug into. So we get to hear the joy of the generators run 24/7.

[SOUND OF GENERATORS RUNNING]

TM: Susie does what other residents do. Stays inside, shops at 6 a.m., doesn’t move her car. She leaves town most weekends in October. But she can’t get past the situation with the Common. She feels like she isn’t able to use the park for the whole month.

SM: This is not an amusement park. This is the Salem Common. It is a gorgeous public space meant for people to enjoy. It’s not the Topsfield Fair, damn it, and it should not become that.

[MUSIC]

TM: She’s particularly upset by what the carnival is doing to the environment. The heavy generators and food trucks, powered by gasoline, sit on top of grass and tree roots all month long. Then, she says the grass doesn’t grow back — or worse, the trees start to get sick.

SM: So this is probably a 30-foot pine tree that has some pine needles at the top, and everything else is totally dead.

TM: It’s crazy that tourism is hurting the trees in Salem, since many of the tourists are going there to see the changing leaves in the fall. Susie wishes she could shut it all down. But she can’t.

SM: I think this is a spigot that we can’t turn off. But we have to figure out how to manage it a little better.

TM: And there’s one person who has been tasked with doing just that.

DOMINICK PANGALLO: My name is Dominick Pangallo, and I am the mayor of Salem, Massachusetts.

TM: Dominick grew up in Salem. To him, it seemed like, as the tourism industry grew, public officials were afraid to address it.

DP: When I was younger, there was a mindset that was very much, “Well, if we don’t do anything, maybe everyone will just go away.” And that doesn’t work.

TM: Salem officials have tried other strategies to manage tourism. They expanded programming so people would have stuff to do, and not just get drunk in the street. They staffed the town’s oldest cemetery to help protect the property from rowdy tourists.

But anything beyond those kinds of measures often requires more power than a small-town mayor can wield. For example, Salem supported the governor’s legislation to increase taxes, so they could earn more revenue from restaurants and hotels. But that policy wasn’t enacted.

During the height of the pandemic, Salem even put a call out to tourists and asked them not to visit, to help keep residents safe.

DP: The city was actually messaging that, that was not the year to come to Salem, please plan your visit for another year, and we still had half a million people visit.

TM: So when Dominick took office in May 2023, he wanted to get ahead of it.

DP: The most responsible thing from a city government perspective is, we have to be thoughtful and proactive. And that’s, that’s the approach that we’ve been taking over these last several years to manage October. And it is a significant project.

[MUSIC]

TM: Every year, planning for the next October tourism season starts immediately on November 1st. City officials spend an entire year meeting every month to unpack how the previous season went, and plan for the next one.

There’s a lot that goes into it. Dominick says Salem doubles its police force in October, by borrowing officers from neighboring towns. Officials plan road closures and extra street sweeping after big events. They rent $90,000 worth of porta potties. Then, they set up satellite parking lots, run shuttles, and work with Boston’s transit agency to increase the frequency of trains into town. And he says the city sees some benefits, in particular to the businesses and hotels downtown.

DP: We have a 98.5% downtown occupancy rate for our commercial spaces. It is creating the vibrancy, the jobs, and giving us the restaurants and the retail and the attractions that we as residents get to enjoy year-round.

TM: It’s true that the people of Salem get good restaurants. But other than that, tourism doesn’t offer that many benefits for residents. Hotels and restaurants bring in a small amount of revenue in taxes, but that’s it. Massachusetts doesn’t have a sales tax, so any other purchases don’t go back to the town. So while tourism has a reputation for bringing in a lot of money, it’s not quite so lucrative for the city government.

DP: Compared against the cost of providing all those additional restrooms, and the police over time, the DPW trash pickups and street sweeping, the barricades, the light towers, we netted $84,000, with a city budget of $200 million. So it’s not a moneymaker for the city.

TM: The mayor’s priority is to make sure residents don’t have to pay for the tourism industry — and that life isn’t so terrible for them because of it.

DP: We don’t want to be in a position where taxpayers and residents are subsidizing those visitors.

[MUSIC]

But regardless of whether you’re part of the industry, not being able to park downtown impacts you, not, you know, needing to add an extra 30 minutes to your drive to go half a mile to drop your kid off for school impacts your life. So I think that’s where you see the frustrations from residents, like, “We see it coming. We know it’s going to happen. It’s going to have an impact on us.” And for some people, the benefits are just not worth the headaches that it brings.

TM: After the break, how the city is trying to raise more money from the tourism industry, so residents don’t end up footing the bill.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

[MUSIC]

Welcome back to Peak Travel. I’m Tariro Mzezewa.

[SOUND OF INDISTINCT CHATTER]

On the crowded plaza of Derby Square, guide Tom Vallor is about to start his history tour.

TOM VALLOR: Let me introduce myself. What up? I’m Tom, I am your tour guide, and I’m going to warn you right now, I’m definitely the most unprofessional tour guide ever. So, like, please do not get your hopes up in that regard. Like, sometimes I’ll say things like, “Yo,” I will call people in history a dude, but I promise what I lack in professionalism I make up for by knowing [bleep].

TM: For the record, Tom’s voice doesn’t usually sound so hoarse.

TV: My voice is the way it is because it is October in Salem, and it is so difficult to corral tourists in order for them to hear me, that I had to scream the other day, and I lost my voice. But it’s still kind of there. Someone said I sound like Steve-O from Jackass.

TM: Keep in mind, it’s only the third day in October. Tom says his job can be difficult. He runs a tour at 8 p.m. on the weekends. And you know what that means.

[MUSIC]

MW: As soon as I walked up, I realized that, like, half the group was drunk, which was really funny.

[SOUND OF CROWD YELLING, LAUGHING]

TV: Holy [bleep]. So the next thing I want to ask. How many of you guys just came from the bar? Yeah, yeah! Please chill. [Laughter] It’s a history tour. It’s not a sports game. Let’s not scream in my face too much.

TM: Tom brings people to iconic Salem sites. Old Burial Point, the site where John and Elizabeth Proctor were jailed, even a tiny statue of the lady from Bewitched. But it takes some babysitting.

TV: We need to make sure that we gather up and cross the street as a group.

Um, you probably want to be on the sidewalk too. That was terrifying.

You guys, you know there’s a sidewalk over there, right? Holy [bleep].

MW: One thing that really stood out to me as we were at the memorial for the Witch Trials, and Tom was explaining the site and this guy was like, “Hey, can we smoke here? “And Tom was like, “No, you can’t do that. That’s, like, that’s not cool.” And this woman next to me, like, lit up a cigarette anyway and was just, like, smoking next to this memorial, which was crazy.

TM: Tom sees all this crowd control as just another part of the job. In recent years, there has been a huge proliferation of tour guides in Salem. Tom says he was one of the first to start out in the business a decade ago. Now, there are more than 300 active guides licensed by the city, many of them from companies that come into Salem, make money there, and previously didn’t have to give any of it back to the town, except for a small $10 fee to register as a tour guide.

[MUSIC]

Last fall, the mayor’s administration upped that tour guide registration fee from $10 to $350 to help manage the dozens of guides crowding the streets. This is one of the few regulations that the city can enact.

DP: In all, I think we’re projecting it’s going to probably bring in about $80,000 to $90,000 for the city, which is not nothing. It’s not going to bankrupt the industry. It’s not going to solve our problems. It’s going to help us hire maybe an additional part-time enforcement person.

[SOUND OF INDISTINCT CHATTER]

TM: Back on Essex Street, John Andrews is in the middle of a huge Halloween block party.

STREET PERFORMER: Jolie is her name it’s her birthday, and all of Salem is singing Happy Birthday to you. 1, 2, 3…

[SOUND OF PEOPLE SINGING HAPPY BIRTHDAY]

JA: There’s dance groups and large Bluetooth speakers and about, I don’t know, 3,000 of our closest friends. So it’s a vibe.

[SOUND OF CHEERING]

STREET PERFORMER: Get out of here! [Laughter]

TM: John runs the outdoor markets in Salem throughout October, organizing more than 200 vendors every weekend.

JA: We manage a lot of the downtown marketplaces in October. making sure all the vendors are set up, making sure everyone’s doing things the way they should be doing things. It’s always a lot.

TM: He knows what it takes to make October in Salem happen. And he’s seen the challenges that come with it. Instead of following the city’s suggestions for what to do in town, many check out what influencers tell them to do. And they end up causing problems.

JA: So there’s a house that was in Hocus Pocus, that is on a street. And that’s all I’m going to say.

MW: Say no more.

JA: And it’s a residential area, and it’s a resident’s house, and they’re an older couple.

MW: So a regular person lives there?

JA: It’s a regular person. It’s not owned by Hollywood. It’s not owned by someone that… And the traffic has become a significant issue. And the police are trying their best to make sure that, you know, if folks need to see it, they can see it. But like, you got to stay out of the neighborhood. You gotta… And so the tourism agencies, the volunteers, main streets, everyone has tried really hard to just not make it part of the equation. Not necessarily, “Don’t go,” but let’s just not talk about it. So the word stops spreading a little bit.

TM: Since Salem can’t actually stop tourists from coming, John says the town has to figure out how to manage the messaging about the town.

JA: We have Halloween Facebook groups that have 100,000, 200,000, quarter of a million followers. And who is the expert behind that page, and what information are they sharing? How do we control that?

TM: The end goal of this whole production is to make it a better experience for everyone — vendors, visitors, and residents.

JA: I don’t know how blatant you want me to be…

MW: As blatant as you want.

JA: But, like, if you’re going to come and pee in someone’s lawn, we don’t want you here. If you’re gonna come and enjoy it, and you can respect that this is a city, we love those people.

[SOUND OF INDISTINCT CHATTER]

[MUSIC]

TM: I don’t think respect is too much to ask. All around the country, residents of small towns are overwhelmed by tourists arriving in a short period of time and making daily life difficult. I want to believe that my travel dollars help locals, but hearing Mayor Pangallo explain just how little all this traffic actually benefits the people who live in Salem made me think again.

I’m not saying we should just stay home, but it’s worth thinking about how we can contribute to a place beyond spending a little money. At a time when social media moves faster than local laws, the responsibility falls on us, travelers, to be thoughtful when we leave home.

Here are some of the questions I’ve started asking myself when I’m itching to go to a place where I know lots of other people are headed: Can I visit during a different time? Is there a town with similar vibes nearby that just isn’t getting as much attention? And if I do decide to go during the height of the busy season, I’m going to make sure I pack my patience, and consider the people who live there.

[MUSIC]

Next time on Peak Travel: Have you ever opened Instagram and felt like everyone is posting from the same place?

TIKTOK VIDEO: “Spend the day with us at Ulum’s newest luxury resort in Moab, Utah.”

INSTAGRAM REEL: “If you’re coming to Greece, you must come to this secret hidden spot that no one knows about.”

TM: There’s a reason for that. It’s by design.

ARIANA SQUILLACCIOTTI: These key really strategic placements, you know, put something on the map.

TM: We’re going to pull back the curtain on the travel media industry, and show you how a place becomes a viral destination.
NICOLE DAHMEN: Those posts, images, stories are purposely designed to create a positive impression in the audience.
TM: That’s next time, on Peak Travel.

[THEME MUSIC]

This is Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa.

Our executive producer is Tom Grahsler.

Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa.

Our editor is Meg Driscoll. Original music by Catherine Anderson. Mixing and sound design by Emma Munger. Engineering by Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, and Diana Martinez. Our tile art was created by Nick Rogacki.

Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeart Radio app — or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Executive Producer: Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Editor: Meg Driscoll
Original Music: Catherine Anderson
Mixing and Sound Design: Emma Munger
Engineers: Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, Diana Martinez
Tile Art: Nick Rogacki

Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.

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