Andrea Zelinski
The busiest days for cruise ships in Juneau, Alaska, can bring so many visitors to town that it feels "suffocating" for residents, said Alexandra Pierce, the visitor industry director for the City and Borough of Juneau.
So the municipality, in cooperation with CLIA and the world's largest cruise lines, will cap the number of lower berths allowed in port each day, beginning in 2026.
Alaska has never been busier. The state hit a record-breaking 1.7 million cruisers last year, a mighty 30% jump from 2019, the last full year of Alaska operations before the pandemic hit.
The swift growth has frustrated some locals so much that some are pushing for a ballot initiative limiting cruise traffic, such as banning ships on Saturdays and July 4. If the measure is certified, the question could appear on the 2024 election ballot.
Juneau sees ship counts totaling 6,000 to 18,000 lower berths daily, although busy days bring ships totaling as many as 21,000 lower berths.
The cap announced last week calls for a maximum of 16,000 lower berths daily except on Saturdays, when the port will be limited to 12,000. For clarity, lower berths is not equal to the number of people who visit, given many ships include children sailing in third and fourth berths.
Those busy days "have felt a bit suffocating for a lot of people, and we're trying to eliminate that and create some balance for the community," Pierce said. "The goal and the message here is that Juneau is hitting pause on growth."
This is the latest move to tap the breaks on cruising. Juneau also installed a five-ship limit this year. Between that limit and the lower-berth caps coming in 2026, cruise passenger numbers will remain flat for at least the next two years.
In that time, Pierce said, there are plans to make the city feel bigger, such as by installing a sea walk to manage downtown congestion, making facility improvements at Mendenhall Glacier (which reached its tour capacity last year) and rethinking ways to better disperse visitors once their ships arrive.
"Our goal is to make a million-and-a-half people feel like a million people" through infrastructure and investments "so that the residents in our community who feel like their community has been maybe pulled away from them a little bit can have that freedom back," Pierce said.
But the cap begs the question of where that cruise traffic will go instead. Pierce said that one cruise executive told her that "if we only had two more ports, this would be so much easier." But unlike Europe where several cities have curtailed cruise traffic or moved docking space to areas outside of the city center, there are simply fewer alternative ports for cruise ships in Alaska.
Pierce said Juneau was in discussions with other major cruise tourism communities in Alaska about volume, but they don't yet have a regional strategy. Tourism officials hinted they could facilitate discussion about a game plan by piggybacking off the U.S. Forest Service's plans to revise its Land Management Plan for the Tongass National Forest. The forest encompasses much of southeast Alaska and serves as both a feature and an adventure playground for visiting cruisers.
Meanwhile, I'm keeping my eye out for port developments that would mean more options for cruise ships and passengers. There is already Icy Strait Point and the newly opened Port Klawock. Will there be others to take the load off Juneau?