The 650-foot Seabourn Odyssey tied up in Wrangell on Sept. 5, the last of its eight stops this summer. The ship is not scheduled back next year, though its sister ship, the Seabourn Quest, is on the 2025 schedule, contributing to the estimated 40,000 cruise passengers that could come to town next year. That would be almost twice this summer's visitor count.
Though not yet final, the initial draft of the 2025 cruise ship schedule estimates around 40,000 passengers could arrive on cruise ships next year, an increase from just over 20,000 in 2024.
Most notably, the number of larger ships (vessels that hold over 1,000 passengers) is expected to about triple. This summer, the largest ships made three port calls in Wrangell: the Nieuw Amsterdam once in May and the Queen Elizabeth twice in July. Both ships have capacity for just over 2,000 passengers.
Next summer, there will be 11 port calls from large ships, according to the preliminary schedule provided by the borough. The largest of which is the Ruby Princess, bringing with it a capacity of 3,082 passengers and over 1,000 crew members. The 19-deck ship is 950 feet long and will arrive in town on June 22.
The large ship scheduled for the most frequent calls in town will be the 1,250-capacity Riviera. The Riviera currently has seven visits scheduled between May and September.
While the increase from this year's 20,000-plus to next year's possible 40,000 is significant, this year has been below expectations. Initial estimates for 2024 were for a potential of 30,000 visitors, but between cancellations and cruise line bankruptcies, Wrangell lost a third of its expected visitors, according to Kate Thomas, the borough's economic development director.
Last year, cruise ship visitors made up 90% of Wrangell's tourists, according to the chamber of commerce. While the chamber hopes to diversify sources of tourism, its new director Tracey Martin is pleased with the 2025 estimates.
"This many visitors to Wrangell opens up a lot of business opportunities for locals," Martin said.
And though the numbers are high for Wrangell standards, other places like Ketchikan and Juneau receive more than a million passengers every summer, often with multiple ships making port in the same day. Even Haines, with about the same population as Wrangell, was scheduled this summer to see 85,000 cruise passengers.
Petersburg, on the other hand, has fallen behind Wrangell's cruise ship figures in recent years. In 2023, the community had around 16,000 cruise ship visitors. That number was expected to remain stagnant this year, according to a Petersburg Pilot report.
However, Stacy Luhr, who works for Petersburg's finance department, said only 6,387 cruise ship visitors have been reported this summer. Ed Tagaban, that town's port and harbor operations supervisor, told the Sentinel he expects that number to increase slightly in 2025, but not anywhere close to the number Wrangell expects.
Back in Wrangell, Thomas is aware that many locals don't want downtown to feel overrun with tourists, but she also realizes the value of a tourism economy. For Thomas, the tentative 2025 cruise ship schedule reflects this.
"The borough is striving to strike a balance between the different classifications of ships so as to maintain a culture and quality of life, while also still allowing for economic activity," she said. To that end, of the 65 scheduled port calls, 17 are small ships, 37 mid-sized ships and 11 are large.
The tentative passenger count does not include port calls by Allen Marine, National Geographic Expeditions or Alaskan Dream Cruises, all of which run smaller boats that carry several dozen passengers each.
According to Thomas, 2024 was a trial year for the over-2,000 capacity passenger ships in Wrangell. She spoke to local businesses and heard "positive remarks on the days (ships that size visited)."
Reader Comments(0)