The final cruise ship of the season, the Norwegian Jewel, leaves Juneau on Thursday evening. It concludes a nearly 200-day cruise ship season for the capital city.
It’s one of the latest departure dates of a ship in Juneau — termination dust has covered the mountains surrounding Gastineau Channel for weeks. It also marks an end to a tumultuous tourism season dominated by a contentious ballot proposition and a surprise port announcement.
During a panel at the Alaska Travel Industry Association conference on Wednesday, Juneau’s Visitor Industry Director Alix Pierce said Juneau is at an inflection point with tourism.
“The best that we can do as policy people who are trying to manage these issues is try to figure out what direction sentiment is moving in, and at what point negative sentiments start to kind of boil over,” she said. “I think it’s fair to say that Juneau’s in one of those places right now.”
In this municipal election, Juneau voters rejected a ballot proposition that would have banned all large cruise ships on Saturdays starting next year. Just a day after election results were finalized, Goldbelt, Inc. and Royal Caribbean revealed plans to develop a new cruise ship port on Douglas Island.
This was the first season major in which cruise lines agreed to observe a five-ship daily limit. The final tally of passengers who came through Juneau this year hasn’t been released yet, but Pierce said the number should land between 1.6 and 1.7 million passengers.
Next year’s passenger numbers will be about the same. But, things are slated to change in 2026. That’s because the city negotiated with cruise lines to cap the number of daily passengers that come off cruise ships: 16,000 people on most days and 12,000 people on Saturdays. Right now, Juneau can see up to 21,000 visitors on its busiest days.
In 2026, ships will also cease visiting Juneau in April and in October, according to Pierce. This year the first ship arrived April 9.
At the conference, Pierce said the city isn’t done working on future negotiations and ways to ease the impacts of tourism in the future.
“With these limits in place, and with all of this work and all of these recommendations that that we’ve made, we’re constantly trying to figure out how to best manage our community,” she said.
Pierce said the city also plans to ramp up public outreach on what residents want to see change in Juneau’s tourism landscape. More information about the season will be shared once the city is done conducting its annual survey on the public’s opinion on tourism.
The first ship of the 2025 season is slated to arrive on Monday, April 14.
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