Dunleavy signs resolution in an effort to bring back cruise tourists

Gov. Mike Dunleavy signed Senate Joint Resolution 9 at a press conference at Wings Airways in Juneau on Friday, sending a message to Congress and the Centers for Disease Control that he believes Alaskan cruise ships should be able to set sail in Alaska with ships full of tourists.

Dunleavy argued that Alaskans are paying a heavy price for the Passenger Services Vessel Act, preventing cruise ships to sail from Washington to Alaska without docking in Canada. In February, Canada announced that they will not allow cruise ships from foreign countries to dock with more than 100 passengers.

“We still have a virus but we’ve got the tools to deal with it, so I’m asking the CDC to give Alaska some due consideration now because our tourist season, our cruise ship season needs to have an answer now. We’re running out of time and so we are going to do anything and everything we can to encourage the CDC to come up with some decisions that make sense for this state,” said Dunleavy.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Alaska in March of 2020, 2,260 people visited Alaska in 2019. Of those tourists, 1,331,600 came to southeast Alaska on cruise ships, accounting for 90 percent of their visitors. Alaskan tourism provides $214 million in municipal and state revenue.

“Our place is open for business. It’s open for business because we’ve got the worst of this behind us. We know what we’re doing. We’re not just saying this and want you to believe, look at the data. The data demonstrates that we know what we’re doing,” said Dunleavy.

Dunleavy compared the influx of out-of-state workers in the mining, fishing, and oil industries safely and called on the CDC or Congress to take action and allow cruise ships to travel to Alaska this summer. Dunleavy announced that a robust national advertising campaign will be undertaken to show Alaskan tourism as an opportunity to people around the world. Dunleavy also said that a second press conference would take place this week to detail a tourism relief package. As part of the tourism relief, Dunleavy is charging Lieutenant Governor Kevin Meyer with having discussions with members of the business community to get feedback on how rollout of tourism relief would be most effective. In 2019, the tourist industry provided nearly $1.5 billion in payroll and brought in over 2 billion in visitor spending.

“Alaska has already demonstrated that we can bring in folks from outside the state and make sure that we do it right. Same thing with our mining industry, you have a mining industry and an oil industry that all worked really well together with the state and with in some cases municipalities. The plans we put in place working collaboratively with those industries helped Alaska get to where it is today so we didn’t have to shut down mining, we didn’t have to shut down the oil industry, we didn’t have to shut down fishing and we believe we don’t’ have to shut down the cruise industry. The message I would give to the CDC, the message I would give to congress, the message I would give to the president is this; give us an opportunity to once again demonstrate that we know what we’re doing,” said Dunleavy.

Dunleavy called on local business owners and lawmakers in Juneau during the press conference to demonstrate what he described the impact that the lack of cruise ship tourists has had on southeast Alaska that he described as an “economic death grapple.”

Juneau Mayor Beth Weldon said that a lack of tourists wrought a $26 million hit on Juneau’s economy.

“The simple fact is that this is a live or die moment for the economy of a huge portion of our state. The business owners that you see behind you standing around the edge of the room have been at it and up against it for far too long. The possibility of two years without customers is dire. It’s bleak and we need to do whatever we can to help them, to help their employees, to help when it comes right down to it, our neighbors,” said Senator Jesse Kiehl. “The resolution doesn’t call, and if you listen carefully you didn’t hear the Governor call for one single safety shortcut when it comes to covid. We can reopen our tourism economy including large cruise ships safely and responsibly in a virus safe way. Alaska is leading the nation and I firmly believe and I think you’ll see all the legislators here today agree that we can, with our continued work on vaccination, with the safety protocols that our businesses have in place, we can host Americans. We can host people from all over the world and show the the great land with good health and with a really good time.”