A preliminary vote count points to a decisive rejection of a citizen petition that would prevent large cruise ships from docking in Juneau, Alaska on Saturdays and on the July 4 holiday.
Residents of Juneau, Alaska’s capital city and a major port call during the summer season, voted in a municipal election on October 1, 2024. One ballot measure asked whether cruise ships carrying more than 250 guests should be prohibited from calling at the destination on Saturday and the Independence Day holiday.
Unofficial results released by the city show that 2,586 residents voted in favor of the measure and 3,873 voted against it. With a total vote count of 6,459, the results show that roughly 60% of voters rejected the so-called “ship-free Saturdays” petition.
Juneau’s cruise arrivals are already limited to 16,000 passengers per day and 12,000 on Saturdays under an agreement reached earlier in 2024 between the city and the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA).
The agreement came after Juneau in 2023 received a record 1.7 million cruise arrivals, a 23% hike over pre-pandemic totals in 2019. Some residents are critical of the cruise industry’s impact on natural resources, municipal infrastructure, and the local lifestyle.
Others, however, who own shops and restaurants or who operate tour companies the cruise lines use for excursions, largely rely on the revenue from the summer season cruise arrivals and opposed the Saturday curtailment.
According to a research report prepared for Juneau, the cruise industry in 2023 was responsible for $375 million in direct spending and $40 million in municipal revenue.
Specifically, it found that cruise ships made over 700 individual calls to Juneau in 2023. The 2023 passenger volume was up 74% from a decade earlier and 28% from the previous record in 2019. The port’s data from 2024 has not yet been made available.
City officials reached the agreement with CLIA in June at the start of the 2024 season, but some locals believed the pact did not go far enough. In July, supporters of the “ship-free Saturdays” petition collected the required number of voter signatures to add the measure to the October ballot.
The petition’s call for only allowing ships with up to 250 guests to call on Saturdays and on July 4 would have banned every major cruise line. It would have enabled some small ship lines to continue to visit, however.
Read Also: Your Guide to the Best Alaska Cruise Ports
Juneau is a port call on many cruise itineraries offered by the major lines, including Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean, Princess Cruises, Holland America, Celebrity Cruises, and Norwegian Cruise Line.
Another Alaska Port Looks for More Cruise Revenue
Juneau is not alone in dealing with the challenges that the cruise industry brings to Alaska’s remote destinations.
Government officials in Haines, a much smaller port roughly 100 miles north of Juneau, voted in late September 2024 to begin charging a cruise revenue passenger fee effective with the 2025 season. The funds are to be used to build, repair, and improve port facilities.
Initially, the port will levy a fee of $9 per person on ships that dock at its port or anchor in its harbor. Each cruise line will be responsible for collecting and remitting the fees to the town.
The fee will rise to $12 per person in 2027 and to $13 per person in 2029. Haines received 97 cruise ship calls in 2023, representing about 68,000 cruise guests. It is a popular port call for Inside Passage itineraries, and is home to the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve and the Chilkoot River, where bear sightings are the focus of shore excursions.
Juneau also charges a per passenger fee to cruise lines, of $8 per person.
