The Wilderness Adventurer makes its first and only scheduled stop of the 2017 visitor season Tuesday morning. Its 28 passengers make up the first wave of tourists to visit the island.
With the arrival of the Wilderness Adventurer on Tuesday, a sunnier outlook for the local economy breaks the clouds of Wrangell's off-season.
The 160-foot vessel is operated by UnCruise Adventures in Seattle, and can carry up to 60 passengers. Early in the season, on Tuesday it was carrying 28 en route to Juneau. According to the latest cruise ship schedule, Adventurer will only be making the one stop into Wrangell this season, but its larger sister vessels Wilderness Explorer and Wilderness Discoverer will be stopping 11 times over the summer.
Sixty more visits are anticipated through the end of September, tour vessels ranging from the 104-foot Alaska Dream to Regent's Seven Seas Mariner, a 709-foot cruise liner that carries 700.
"One of the boats will be in on the Fourth of July, which should be interesting this year," pointed out Shawna Buness, at the Wrangell Chamber of Commerce office.
According to industry projections, analyst Meilani Schijvens of Juneau's Rain Coast Data said 2017 could potentially break records for cruise ship arrivals in Southeast Alaska. The record was set in 2008 with the arrival of 1.03M people, before a hard recession reversed the trend.
"We broke the million-passenger mark for the first time since 2009 last year," Schijvens noted.
Part of the trend is reflective of improvements in the overall economy, with the country making a slow recovery since 2009. Though Alaska is still in a state of recession and the state continues to make agency cuts in order to address its multibillion-dollar spending deficit, outside money through tourism has helped the sector continue to grow in recent years.
According to labor statistics, tourism accounted for nine percent of all employment earnings in the region in 2015, with 1,420,877 visitors bringing in $207.3M. The sector made up about 17 percent of all jobs in Southeast, and is currently the fastest-growing. About 500 average annual jobs were added last year, and a total of 1,500 have been added since 2010.
"The visitor industry has the strongest outlook for all of Southeast Alaska," Schijvens reported.
There are other factors to consider when gauging the industry, such as safety concerns traveling abroad. She noted international tension and crises have been a boon to domestic travel, and exotic states such as Alaska and Hawaii have benefitted from the unease.
The additional passengers coming to Alaska do not necessarily point to a larger fleet.
"We're getting a similar number of vessels," Schivens noted. But "the boats are getting bigger."
Cruise Lines International Association Alaska, an industry group, reports that to better handle the larger ships now calling on Alaska, facilities are being expanded significantly. Juneau – which receives 99 percent of all traffic passing through the region – is in the process of building two panamax docks capable of accommodating 1,000- and 1,110-foot ships in its downtown district. The first phase adding a southern berth was completed last spring, and the second northern phase begun in September is expected to finish next month. At Hoonah, Icy Strait Point is adding a 400-foot floating dock and welcome center as well.
Wrangell has been making improvements of its own, with the addition of a second summer float finalized last year and updates to the main dock's railings, moorings and electrical system wrapping up before the summer season. Sale of tide- and uplands beside the dock to the Stikine Inn were recently approved by the city, and the hotel has plans to expand in the next three to five years.
Not all visitors have come by cruise ship, with about 30 percent traveling by air or ferry. Air travel passengers hit record highs last year as well, a trend whose envelope Schijvens predicted will continue to be pressed in the coming year.
While regional economic forum Southeast Conference has projected the visitor industry will continue to improve in coming years, problems arising from the state's budget crisis could be a dampener. Cuts to the state's tourism marketing budget have dropped by 92 percent since 2015, to $1.5M this year. Those resources go into funding advertisements and promotional drives online and in traditional media, drawing attention – and hopefully dollars – to the state. With less support on the state side, the burden of marketing may instead swing over to the private sector.
"We're relying on the cruise industry to spend that money for us," said Schijvens.
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