A new daily limit on cruise passengers didn’t keep Juneau from setting a record-high season total for the fourth year in a row.
A total of 1,733,016 passengers arrived on large cruise ships during this year’s season that ended Oct. 6, according to Alexandra Pierce, tourism manager for the City and Borough of Juneau. That’s about 2.6% more than the 1,688,738 passengers in 2025, and a continuing upward trend from 1,677,935 in 2024 and 1,638,902 in 2023.
“It’s not particularly different from expectations,” Pierce wrote in an email, noting “we usually run a little over our projected lower-berth capacity. We were at 104% this year which is a little high.”
Capacity is based on two people per cabin, so rates over 100% are possible due to extra people on pull-out beds, bunks and cradles.
By comparison, Wrangell had a strong summer cruise ship season for the smaller community, with ship port calls totaling almost 75,000 berths through the end of the season the last week of September.
This year was the first Juneau summer had a voluntary daily passenger limit in effect of 16,000 people (12,000 on Saturdays).
“The goal with passenger limits is to avoid explosive growth, and we’re looking at relatively flat numbers for 2027 and 2028,” Pierce wrote. “We are happy that the limits are keeping our numbers under control,” she said.
“The passenger limits weren’t intended to reduce the overall number of visitors, but to level things out to create a sense of predictability and stability for residents and businesses,” Pierce added. “With lower berth capacity between 1.6 million and 1.7 million from 2023 to 2028, we believe we have achieved that.”
The daily limit did have some impacts on Juneau’s sailing schedule as well as other Southeast Alaska ports.
Royal Caribbean reduced its sailings to Alaska’s capital this year — and is scheduled to do so again next year — opting instead for destinations such as Icy Strait Point near Hoonah, which saw a significant increase in passengers this year. That led to speculation early this year that Ketchikan could pass Juneau in passenger arrivals for the first time ever.
It appears that didn’t happen, with Ketchikan projecting about 1.67 million passengers this year, said Laurie Booyse, that city’s tourism manager, in an interview on Oct. 7. But that is well above the roughly 1.5 million passengers that city saw last year.
Ketchikan also had more port calls by ships compared to a year ago, but the most significant reason for this year’s passenger increase is “there's also much bigger ships,” Booyse said.
