Throughout Juneau’s final cruising season, a record-breaking 1.6 million cruise ship passengers visited the Alaskan capital.
However how will the introduction of cruise passenger limits have an effect on its capacity to welcome friends?
In response to Juneau Tourism Supervisor Alix Pierce, there aren’t any onerous numbers but. Nevertheless, Pierce is optimistic since cruise strains have already dedicated to a conceptual settlement that locations a cap on the variety of every day passengers.
| “We should not have a preliminary settlement on an MOA with particular numbers but, however now we have agreed to the idea of a every day restrict MOA, which is a vital step in the fitting path,” she introduced at a current meeting assembly. |
She added that after the settlement is finalized and authorised, it will likely be carried out in 2026.
Except for decreasing the variety of cruise ship passengers, Pierce shared that native officers are attempting to make Saturday the least congested day of the week for Juneau.
Native authorities are additionally utilizing the negotiations to debate points the town has been experiencing relating to congestion and sizzling berthing (when a cruise ship leaves and is changed by one other on the identical day).
Alaska’s different makes an attempt to control the cruise trade
Final yr, Juneau succeeded in introducing a 5-per-day restrict on massive cruise ships. In February 2024, the town introduced that it was in a position to radically scale back cruise ship trash from 2019 to 2023 by 92%.
Nevertheless, not all of Alaska’s makes an attempt to control the cruise trade have flourished. In 2023, a resident additionally tried to impose a restrict on the variety of cruise friends that Sitka might host. From 560,000 cruise ship guests, it proposed to introduce a cap of solely 240,000 passengers per cruising season. The proposal was rejected by the town final October.
Juneau made the same transfer to considerably regulate cruise ship passengers in 2021, nevertheless it failed as a result of it wasn’t in a position to collect sufficient signatures.
In response to a 2023 Financial Affect report, Juneau acquired over $22 million in revenues related to cruise ships in 2023.
