Sitka, a fast-growing cruise port on Alaska’s Inside Passage, is edging closer to establishing a daily limit of 7,000 cruise passengers as a way to gain control over cruise tourism’s impact on the destination’s local population and pristine environment.
The Sitka Assembly on November 12, 2024 approved a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the city’s privately-owned Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal that sets the cap on cruise guest arrivals.
The MOU is not a legal document or contract, and is considered a framework for reaching goals that were outlined in a set of recommendations by the city’s Tourism Task Force earlier this year.
The plan also designates Saturday as a “weekend quiet day,” when cruise ships with a lower berth capacity for more than 1,000 guests will not be allowed to dock or to tender passengers ashore.
Additionally, the MOU aims to curtail the length of the Sitka cruise season by prohibiting ships with a lower birth capacity of greater than 1,000 passengers from calling during April and October.
The vote by the assembly followed an earlier effort, in June 2024, by townspeople to limit daily cruise arrivals to 4,500 passengers, with an annual cap of 300,000. However, their plan was quashed a month later, when the Sitka municipal clerk denied their petition for a ballot initiative.
The Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal can accommodate two 1,000-foot neo-Panamax cruise ships simultaneously, with a total capacity of 8,000 guests.
The length limit enables mega-ships to dock but excludes some of the world’s largest ships, such as Royal Caribbean’s Oasis-class and Icon-class vessels, which exceed 1,100 feet.
The memorandum between the city and the dock owner also aims to improve communication between the two entities, with the sharing of information about ship schedules and notifications about any changes to schedules. Under the proposal, the MOU will be reviewed every five years.
When the MOU is finalized with the signature of the owner of Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal, it would take effect immediately. However, the 2025 cruise season already is scheduled and port calls have been booked by individual cruise lines. The document calls for the entities to work together to reach some of the plan’s goals.
“Knowing that the 2025 cruise season has already been scheduled and put on sale by cruise companies, both the City and Borough of Sitka and Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal agree to review the schedule and coordinate in good faith to achieve the purposes, intentions, and expectations set forth in this MOU to the greatest extent possible,” the memorandum of understanding states.
Sitka Joins Other Ports Capping Cruise Arrivals
Sitka welcomed a record 585,000 cruise guests in 2023 and is expected to break that record when 2024 numbers are tallied. The destination is not alone in trying to curtail and control the growth of cruise tourism.
Read Also: Your Guide to the Best Alaska Cruise Ports
In Bar Harbor, Maine, residents voted on November 5, 2024, to maintain the town’s daily cap of 1,000 cruise guests. A question on the ballot asked voters to boost the number to 3,200 per day.
Under the failed proposal, the annual cap at the Maine port would have been set at 200,000 guest arrivals.
Alaska’s capital city and one of its largest ports, Juneau, also has set daily limits for cruise ship disembarkations. In an agreement signed in May 2024 with the Cruise Lines International Association, the city capped the number of cruise ship passengers to 16,000 per day, with a reduced limit of 12,000 on Saturdays.
