It’s shaping up to be a record-breaking cruise ship season in Haines.
Haines is expecting an uptick in cruise ship traffic this year. Tourism director Carolanne Wooton said there will be about 10,000 more passengers this year over last year.
“It’s exciting to see the interest in porting in Haines. I think we are definitely at a place where we’re going to start seeing a return of our investment and I like that! That’s great!” she said.
She says by return on investment she means the effort that’s gone into attracting cruise ships to Haines over the last couple of years. This season she expects nearly 65,000 passengers and just under 30,000 crew. There will be 111 arrivals this year.
Haines instituted a 3-year 50% docking fee reduction in 2017. The reduction is in effect through the end of this calendar year. Wooton says she thinks it has played a part in attracting ships to the port.
Wooton says Haines also offers an experience unlike other ports: it’s a small community that has access to natural beauty. That unique experience is what’s attracting smaller, boutique cruise lines like UnCruise.
UnCruise’s ship Wilderness Adventurer will be the first and last to dock in Haines this season. UnCruise is promoting an earlier season, so ships will begin to arrive in Haines in late April and run through the end of September.
This year Wooton will be part of a sustainable tourism working group. The group does not yet have a name, but they do have a goal: a sustainability plan for Haines tourism over the next five years.
“How do we handle a large influx of people how do you move people around in your community so that it helps to minimize the negative impacts for the community? Obviously if our community is happy our guests will have a great experience as well, so I think that’s really important,” she said.
She wants to figure out how to maintain a vibrant tourism economy that’s also responsive to community concerns. Part of that is managing moving visitors through the community, another is managing bandwidth. Cruise ship passengers and community members sometimes vie for internet access.
“Interestingly enough, the cruise ships charge quite a bit of money for people to use their WiFi and their internet on the ship, so oftentimes as soon as they hit port, people are immediately looking for WiFi access. Which in a community like Haines that can be a little stressful on the rest of us who live and die by internet here, too,” she said.
But she says these are good problems to have. The influx of people craving services is an opportunity for the economy.
The Portage Cove dock will operate this summer for the first time in a decade. The Chilkoot Indian Association bought the dock in February of last year from Klukwan Inc. It will receive smaller cruise ships beginning in late April.
