More than half-a-million cruise ship tourists will have visited Sitka this summer — a record number — and slightly more are expected next year, Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal owner Chris McGraw told an audience at the online chamber of commerce meeting Sept. 6.
He said it looks like the end-of-summer number will total 271 cruise ship stops in Sitka, which includes vessels that pull into his terminal and others that anchor offshore and lighter their passengers to city facilities.
He estimates the year’s traffic will total 514,000 passengers at his terminal and 560,000 for Sitka overall.
The cruise terminal on Halibut Point Road can handle one or two ships simultaneously, including the largest vessels that come to Southeast – the Norwegian Bliss and Ovation of the Seas, each of which can accommodate 4,000 passengers.
“If there’s demand to come to Sitka and the infrastructure is available for space, as a private business owner if I can accommodate them with respect to my resources and my shuttle operation, I’m going to book that ship,” McGraw said. “Obviously, we have a significant investment we’ve made here over the last 10 years.”
Work on the cruise terminal began in 2009, and the first cruise ship docked there in 2012. In 2019, the dock received 190,000 passengers. During the COVID pandemic shutdown of cruise travel to Alaska, McGraw expanded the terminal to accommodate much larger vessels.
He said he expects the 2024 cruise season to be comparable to this year. “It’s going to be very, very similar to this season. The latest schedule I looked at had roughly 567,000 passengers,” he said.
He has added a dozen year-round positions to help manage the dock this year. Wages for seasonal workers have “increased considerably,” he said. Shuttle drivers make $32 an hour and are guaranteed a 40-hour work week, McGraw said. Housing is included as part of the job — only two of his bus drivers are locals, he noted.
With such a massive influx of tourists in Sitka this summer compared to prior years, McGraw noted the logistical difficulties surrounding shuttle service and said he plans to improve that situation moving forward.
“One of my primary goals is to distribute passengers throughout Sitka and the surrounding area better and reduce the demand on our shuttle to downtown,” he said. “The increased traffic and the bus traffic — it’s a logistic headache sometimes with some of the large ships.”
With shuttle buses ferrying tourists from the cruise dock to downtown and back throughout the day, McGraw said he struggled to find enough qualified drivers, and also noted the general traffic congestion caused by the influx of visitors.
He said he is working to add a 260-seat theater to the cruise terminal and hopes more local tour operations spring up around the terminal as a way of diffusing tourist density in town.
“The problem is that we just don’t have tours to sell in Sitka, and by developing new tour products, and increasing those opportunities, it will help get those people out on boats and other excursions and not necessarily on a shuttle to get dropped off in downtown, which will reduce that congestion,” he said.
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