Over 1000 Sitkans responded to a cruise tourism survey recently circulated by the city’s tourism task force. When the task force met Thursday night (1-25-24), they reviewed the survey results and continued to grapple with questions about how to “right size” tourism in Sitka.
The survey asked Sitkans to share specific numbers they’d like to see for the 2025 season. The majority of respondents said they want less tourism and support city regulation of that tourism. Most also supported having at least one designated “quiet day” each week, and, on average, supported having about 400,000 cruise ship visitors per season.
In addition to reviewing survey data, the task force wrestled with questions raised in recent town halls on the topic – like whether an increase in tourism could put Sitka’s rural status at risk, and how the city might handle a natural disaster with thousands of visitors in town. Vice-chair Rich McClear said it wasn’t clear that Sitka’s emergency response teams could handle that kind of load.
“The earthquake that we had a few days ago really puts it into focus,” McClear said. “What happens if we have an earthquake and a tsunami, and there are 10,000 people in town plus the local population? That scares me. And that’s the question I really think we need to talk about.”
Task force member Rich McClear is co-general manager of KCAW.
Sitka Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Rachel Roy said that understanding the city’s capacity to expand infrastructure like bathrooms and walkways for the 2025 season would also help inform the task force’s recommendations.
“I think one of the things that we’re seeing that is causing a lot of the congestion and the trouble that we hear comments about comes from infrastructure that hasn’t been implemented,” Roy said. “I think of projects like the Lincoln Street project widening the sidewalks that would change the flow of that traffic pattern and maybe solve some of that. Like, what are the things that are kind of in motion already, so that we can kind of weigh whether some of this is going to be solved by these investments?”
City planning director Amy Ainslie noted that the task force didn’t necessarily need to land on a magic number for cruise ship visitors, and that they could pivot to focus on addressing the issues people had identified.
“Instead of focusing on a set, on a specific number, at least getting the things that we think will have good positive impact in terms of overall tolerance level with the cruise ship season,” Ainslie said. “And focus on those factors, not to say that’s the end-all-be-all vision of what the right number is now going into the future but at least, you know, saying these are the issues that rise to the top that we know we want to work on.”
You can find the full survey results here. The task force has been asked to give a recommendation to the Assembly by the end of April.
