Juneau officially sets another cruise ship visitor record despite early-season concerns
- Mark Sabbatini
- Nov 20
- 4 min read
Tourism managers say tariffs and fewer foreigners caused some impacts, but didn’t seriously impact a generally successful season that saw 1,688,738 large-ship visitors
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Early concerns about tariffs and reluctant foreign visitors turned out to be largely unfounded during what turned out to be another record-high year for cruise ship passengers in Juneau, a trio of local tourism business managers said during a panel discussion Thursday.
A total of 1,688,738 passengers from large cruise ships visited Juneau this year, a 0.6% increase from the previous record set in 2024, according to this month’s issue of "The Tide Line" by the City and Borough of Juneau’s Docks and Harbors department. Roughly the same number of passengers are forecast to visit during the 2026 season, although a small dropoff is possible due to new voluntary daily passenger limits that have resulted in some sailings being cancelled.
Warnings from many in the travel industry were expressed during the first months of the year due to high tariffs imposed and threatened by President Donald Trump, along with reports of large numbers of foreigners being detained at airports and deported. But the trio of local managers told a full room of other business leaders at the Greater Juneau Chamber of Commerce’s weekly luncheon they didn’t see the dropoff some people feared.
"I think for a lot of people there was a lot of uncertainty in the early part of the year, whether it was the political environment or how that related to the economy, a lot of our relations with some of our neighbors and international neighbors, and just how that would impact consumer spending and consumer travel trends," said Rebecca Embler, director of finance for Wings Airways, which offers floatplane sightseeing tours from downtown Juneau. "We ended up seeing that the 2025 season was actually pretty good. It was in line with seasons before."
Tariffs did result in cost concerns for purchasing items ranging from food to gift merchandise to aircraft parts, the panelists said. But all said they didn’t suffer significant financial setbacks — and that poor weather was the main limiting factor for operations such as flightseeing.
"Going into this year our pre-sales were down quite a bit," said Sarah Lowell, general manager for Coastal Helicopters. "So it was a little nerve-wracking coming into the season and playing that weather game that we have to play. Overall our numbers were down compared to last year — not significantly, which I thought they were gonna because May and June were pretty tough on us weatherwise. But July and August were rock stars."
There’s cause for optimism looking ahead to next season and beyond, but also additional concerns — including whether some downtown city cruise docks will be empty as more private docks are built, according to the panel discussion participants. Huna Totem Corp. is hoping to open its private Áak’w Landing dock near the U.S. Coast Guard station in 2027 and Goldbelt Inc. hopes to debut a two-dock port on west Douglas Island in 2028.
"I want to know that there's a ship that’s going to dock at that dock — every year, every day — because that's what we've built our businesses around, that schedule," said Eric Forst, a co-owner of the Red Dog Saloon, told the audience. "That's how we operate. We've built up our business, we've expanded, we've grown to meet the demand. And for all of a sudden to take that demand away, that's a difficult pill to swallow and I don't want to have to do that. We employ a lot of people and I want to keep them all employed, and keep contributing to our community, both through taxes and donations, and all the things we all do to keep Juneau a great place to live."
Forst said one change he noted this year was more domestic travelers and fewer foreign visitors. He also noted people drank less beer and more hard liquor.
The panelists, and some audience members during a question-and-answer session, agreed one thing they’d like to see in future years is less contentiousness among Juneau residents about tourism since the industry is the city’s largest private employer, according to recent economic studies. An annual “Southeast Alaska By the Numbers” economic report presented in September states tourism provided 19% of the region’s jobs and 13% of total employee earnings in 2024.
There was also some agreement expressed on smaller improvements tourism-affected businesses would like to see from the city, such as more public restrooms downtown.
Thursday’s discussion, along with other off-season activities such as annual surveys of residents and businesses about tourism impacts, are examples of how efforts to resolve concerns about those impacts can be successful, said Alexandra Pierce, CBJ’s tourism manager, during the Q&A. She said she was at an international tourism industry gathering recently where the speaker was discussing "radical collaboration with your community."
"So I raised my hand and I asked her to give an example, and she said, ‘Oh, like Juneau, Alaska, does such a good job. They do these surveys. And, like, the community really talks to each other,’" Pierce said, noting that the speaker didn’t know she was talking to a Juneau official. "It's conversations like this. It's that we spend our time in the off-season asking questions and examining — I took the feedback about the bathrooms to heart — what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong, what we could do better, how our local businesses could work better together."
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
