New cruise ship health protocols would limit passengers’ shore experience to only cruise line approved tours, stores and restaurants. The municipality of Skagway doesn’t want to see any local businesses left behind.
Quiet streets in Skagway. September, 2020. Stremple/KHNS)
COVID-19 dealt the cruise industry a crippling blow this year. Port closures and emergency orders effectively canceled sailings to Alaska after the virus infected hundreds of people on vessels around the world. Dozens of passengers died.
So the industry has a lot riding on safety protocols for a 2021 season. And so does Skagway—nearly its entire economy is at stake. When the Centers for Disease Control asked port communities to weigh in on how cruise ships should operate, Mayor Andrew Cremata was concerned about the implications of a question, phrased ‘should cruise ship operators limit shore excursions?’
At an August municipal assembly meeting he said that idea raised red flags. Since then, the cruise industry released health protocols that indicate it will control passenger movement on shore.
Cremata says he’s wary of a scenario where the federal government allows the cruise ship industry to control which local businesses see passengers.
“Say, in the town of Skagway there were only two tour operators, one restaurant, and four retail outlets that were approved by the cruise ship. Where does that leave the vast majority of business owners? Obviously, that’s not a tenable situation, you could get a million passengers in ’21 and still see 80 percent of our businesses go under,” he said.
Cruise lines say they plan to contain passengers in “bubbles” on and off shore. Mayor Cremata argues that, with fewer than 1,000 residents and one main street, the whole town is a little bubble of its own. It’s an outlier in that sense, and another.
Skagway has never had a confirmed positive case of the coronavirus. Some see an opportunity to turn that exceptional record into an exception—to let all of Skagway be “in bounds” for cruise passengers.
“Right now we’re negotiating with the chip that we are COVID free. And that’s our biggest and best chip,” said assembly member Dustin Stone at the last assembly meeting.
“And if we lose that this winter, we right now have writing that says ‘this is our plan.'”
The plan he’s talking about is the cruise line control scenario, which isn’t a viable one for the future of Skagway’s economy. So Cremata said the community needs to be ready to do whatever it takes to convince the cruise industry not to limit passenger movement in town.
“Skagway has to be prepared—you may be a very pro mask, you may be very anti mask, and that’s all great—but if the cruise ship companies say that everybody needs to wear a diaper on their head or they’re not going to do business here, we better be willing to go out and buy a box of Pampers. Because otherwise, we’re not going to have a community here post 2021,” he said.
In a letter to the municipality’s tourism department, Alaska cruise industry representative Mike Tibbles wrote that quote “this initial restart is not where we hope to be in the future,” and said the industry “looks forward” to expanding its safety net so that more shops, attractions, and restaurants are included.
Cremata said conversations with cruise lines and other industry representatives have been similarly positive, but none of them has made him a binding commitment yet.
