Haines could see a record number of summer visitors, according to industry projections

Haines could see a record number of visitors this summer, according to preliminary industry estimates, traveling by air, car and cruise lines. However, many questions remain around border restrictions, the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors. KHNS’ Corinne Smith checked in with Haines Tourism Director Steven Auch for the latest projections. Here’s part one of that conversation. Stay tuned for part two on Wednesday’s newscast. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

KHNS: Steven, thanks so much for joining us today. So can you give us a broad perspective of Haines summer tourism outlook, kind of what we know right now?

Steven Auch: Sure, there’s a lot to kind of break down in that. But I guess kind of a quick glance is, from all the industry metrics, if you look at all the traveler sentiment and everything, people want to travel. So everybody is expecting to see a lot of travelers throughout the world, not just in the United States and Alaska. So we expect that they will want to travel to remote places and do as much of the city travel they used to do. So there’s an expectation that we’ll see more people in areas such as Haines and just the state of Alaska as a whole. So we expect that but of course, the things that are going to impact some of those independent travelers in particular, would be the question about Canada. As we know, right now, the border is open for fully vaccinated travelers with testing requirements. But we don’t know if that will change which direction it will go or when that’ll happen. So that does impact people driving here or taking the ferry up and then continuing on to the interior.

KHNS: Right, the US-Canadian border requirements are still uncertain. How about air travel and cruise ship passengers to Haines?

Auch: Alaska Airlines actually reported that they think that they will be matching their 2019 capacity by summer of this year. So that’s nice to hear. They also said that their capacity out of Seattle already exceeds 2019, currently, so that means that air travel is certainly looking strong. And then of course, there’s the question of cruise traffic. And right now, if we look at the schedule published by cruise line agencies of Alaska, we take all of those ships and kind of put capacity on it. Normally, we could count on those numbers. But obviously, this is a different time. But based on that number of 100% capacity on all those ships, we would expect to see about 90,000 passengers in Haines this year. And the important thing to note on that is that’s quite an increase. As a matter of fact, from our average from the last 10 years, pre-COVID 2010 through 2019, we average the route around 38,000 guests in Haines. So going into 90,000 is a huge increase. And to those that remember 2019, a lot of people were calling it a banner year for us because it was certainly the biggest volume we had seen in a while. In 2019, we saw 54,000 passengers off of cruise ships. So staring in the face of that 90,000 number is a pretty big number. 

KHNS: Wow yeah, that would be huge.

Auch: But at the presentation at the Chamber of Commerce, lunch the other day (Feb 25), Lanie Downs from CLIA (Cruise Lines International Association) spoke, and she said that they’re expecting to see not quite that 100% capacity like we’d seen in the past. So it’s important to note that number, we can’t expect the full amount. But the thing that I like to kind of prepare people for is, even if those ships sail, let’s say, two thirds capacity, 66%, you’re still looking at 60,000 people, which is still an increase over the 2019 number. So as long as we don’t have to worry about any issues with CDC, shutting down cruise again, which we don’t expect at this point. Then if we see those numbers, they’ll certainly be big. 

See Haines’ 2022 cruise ship calendar here. Tune in to Wednesday’s newscast for part two of this conversation.