Friday the 13th does not exist for me. It’s the day we cross the dateline, we move directly from the 12th to the 14th. To compensate we will have two October 12ths on the way back.
A lost day at sea is a good time to write about the biggest issue in Sitka today, cruising. In the first two decades of the 2000s we never had as many as 300,000 cruise visitors a year. During the pandemic the local cruise dock operator enlarged his facility to accomodate neo-Panamax ships of more than 4,000 passengers. The number of cruise visitors has skyrocketed since the resumption of cruising.
Sitka’s sidewalks are too narrow to accommodate more than 5,000 visitors a day, so on days we have over 5K we close the main street to traffic.
There were not enough toilets in town. The Emergency Room is swamped on big ship days. Residential streets have buses belching pollution. E-bike renters, some of whom have not ridden a bike in 20 years, ride 4 abreast against traffic and sometimes get lost on our trails and need rescuing. Internet and cell phone services are overwhelmed. A week before I left, I was not be able to complete a telemedicine appointment. Shoplifting jumped. At the library the toilets backed up and when the librarians put out Alaska activity packets for local kids, cruise visitors picked them up for their own grandkids. The local library summer kids’ program was curtailed. Grocery stores who thought they knew their inventories found they were short. Once when a cruise ship out of yogurt, the crew cleaned out the grocery stores which cannot resupply easily being on an island 900 miles from Kirkland. There’s more. The local bus system is swamped. Busses fill up at either end of the line and have no room to pick up passengers who want to get on along the route. This causes an increase in absenteeism. There are not enough employees to handle the increased workload, and when the tourism season starts before school is out and ends after school is back in session the worker shortage became acute. My biggest nightmare is what happens if there is a tsunami warning when we have twice our population in town.
All of this has caused a backlash. Cruise visitors to Sitka may see signs reading “Paradise Lost, too many Buses.” “300,000 Max” or “Small Town Soul.” There have been proposals to limit cruise tourism by ordinance.
To deal with the issue the city appointed a tourism taskforce. I was vice-chair. We gave the City Assembly 32 recommendations to mitigate the impact. A major one is a Tourism Best Management Practices self-regulation code that we hope the industry and cruise lines will adopt. But even if the industry cooperates, it will take time for our infrastructure to catch up.
If you are interested in learning more about the issue ArtChange has produced an excellent documentary “Cruise Boom” that takes a snapshot of Sitka at a place in time. It is available on PBS at:
If you want to read about what some of the advocates for limiting cruise tourism are saying, click on:
I don’t think a majority of Sitkans want to limit tourism. When our taskforce tried to gauge opinion, we found a split community with most people either wanting an increase in visitors to spur the economy or sharp limitations to save the community lifestyle. There were very few people in the middle. Generally young people want the increase. Their argument is that their parents and grandparents could go out, buy a boat, and fish, building a business from a part time hobby to a commercial operation. With limited entry permits and individual fishing quotas that new fishermen have to buy for huge amounts of money, that door is closed. They want opportunity that comes from running charter boats, food trucks, tours, or renting bikes and kayaks. Older people do not like the changes the visitors are bringing.
But it is not always predictable, some retail business like the increased tourists, others do not. Some art galleries say that on big cruise ship days too many visitors slow sales. To buy art you need time and space to contemplate. Other businesses say that on big days there are more tire kickers and fewer buyers. But some businesses thrive on crowds. My neighbor is doing very well with his shop at the cruise terminal.
Some are proposing limiting the size of ships. If the community were able to limit ships calling here to 3,000 passengers, (there were 7 ships over that capacity in 2023) it would cut the number of cruise visitors by over a quarter million. Holland America has no ships that big.
While Sitka struggles with increased numbers, some towns are craving more cruise tourism. Until recently Sitka was in that category. The problem is the growth was sudden and explosive. Haines, where Westerdam docked, is happy for more ship visits, and is beginning to take overflow from Skagway. Dutch Harbor had 22 ship calls scheduled this year, only 18 made it in and most people seem happy to get those. On the Prince of Wales Island town of Klawock the community is building cruise attractions, modeled on Icy Point in Hoonah, to attract ships.
New ports of call may be part of our solution. Our tourism taskforce recommended one “down day” a week with no ships. We want to do it through negotiation with the lines and dock owner. Juneau is trying to do it through referendum. Achieving this goal may not be as difficult as it seems because many cruises originate in Seattle or Vancouver on Friday, Saturday and Sunday which puts those ships in transit on weekends. As the number of ships grow this will be more difficult, especially as lines develop longer itineraries. Having more ports to spread ships around may help, and it will give cruise lines more options to attract repeat Alaska cruisers who want new experiences. A model for this may be Glacier Bay. When it exceeded carrying capacity, ships started calling at Hubbard Glacier, as our ship did, or at Tracy and Endicott arms.
Westerdam called on Sitka this cruise, and we got to show off our new cruise facility, which is locally owned and is filled with locally owned businesses.
No Diamonds International. I hope it stays that way and we can reach an accommodation that allows cruise lines to continue to come to Sitka. I love showing off my town as much as I enjoy cruising to others.
Two Pics from Westerdam’s Ocean Bar of the Norwegian Sun as we pulled out of Sitka on September 5.
Such an interesting article, Rich! We loved our “private group tour” with you & Suzi in June & really enjoyed experiencing the new cruise terminal on our recent visit…Very impressive.