A gradual increase in negative attitudes about tourism impacts among local residents continued in an annual survey presented Tuesday in which 29% of respondents said the industry has a positive impact and 13% a negative impact — a 2% drop in positive and 2% rise in negative compared to a year ago.
The 16% gap between positive and negative responses in the most recent survey compares to a 34% gap in 2002 when responses were 40% positive and 6% negative.
“The big trend over time is that we’ve seen a bit of a decline in community support,” Alexandra Pierce, tourism manager for the City and Borough of Juneau, told regional leaders at Southeast Conference’s Mid-Season Summit on Tuesday. “It’s a slow decline. It’s not statistically significant year over year. But support is eroding over time and impacts are increasing — and with the amount of growth that we’ve seen from 2018, frankly I’m surprised that that slope isn’t steeper, but it also means that we have work to do.”
A 42% plurality of respondents in the most recent survey said tourism has both positive and negative impacts, with 39% of those residents saying positives outweighed negatives, 28% saying negatives prevailed and 30% neutral/negative. The “both impacts” percentage has fluctuated over the years from 37% in 2002 to 33% in 2021 to 46% in 2023.
Juneau saw a record 1.68 million cruise ship passengers in 2024, up slightly from an also-record total of 1.64 million in 2023. City and industry officials are projecting a slight decline this year, but a total still in excess of 1.6 million that would significantly exceed traffic prior to those two record years.
Local attitudes about cruise tourism also attracted global headlines in 2024 due to a municipal ballot initiative seeking to ban cruise ships with capacity for 250 or more passengers on Saturdays and the Fourth of July. The measure was defeated with 61% of voters opposed after a campaign where the cruise industry and local businesses outspent proponents by roughly 1,000 to 1.
The current telephone survey of 501 randomly selected residents seeking their opinions about the 2024 tourism season was conducted by McKinley Research Group on behalf of the City and Borough of Juneau, which has conducted similar surveys since 1995. All of the current survey’s respondents said they lived in Juneau during the summer of 2024 and the survey’s margin of error is 4.3%.
Among impacts current respondents said they were somewhat or very affected by:
• 70% crowding on sidewalks downtown, up from 59% in 2023.
• 67% crowding at the Mendenhall Glacier, up from 63% in 2023
• 65% vehicle congestion downtown, up from 61% in 2023.
• 51% vehicle congestion outside of downtown, up from 45% in 2023.
• 54% flightseeing noise, up from 43% in 2023.
A total of 54% percent of respondents said CBJ is not doing enough to manage tourism impacts, down from 56% in 2023, but up from 45% in 2021 and 2022. A total of 33% of respondents said CBJ has been doing “just the right amount” the past two years.
One trend in the current survey is residents — who in recent years have voted twice against a new City Hall building — aren’t in favor of sizable new tourism-oriented construction projects by the city.
When asked about what the city should prioritize in managing, the biggest item was 53% of respondents who said tour impacts should be a high priority. High-priority responses for other items included 49% who named reducing traffic congestion, supporting independent tourism promotion at 37%, further limiting cruise volume at 37%, shore power at 35%, extending the Seawalk at 24% and expanding Centennial Hall to attract more conferences at 19%.
The city has taken numerous steps intended to mitigate the impacts of large-scale cruise ship tourism in particular, including a voluntary five-ship daily limit the industry agreed to that took effect last year, Pierce said. But she also said the city hasn’t been able to build new tourism-oriented infrastructure that keeps pace with the rise in visitors, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My perception is that infrastructure is a destination management tool,” she said. “Over time we’ve been able to build things, we’ve been able to provide new experiences for our visitors, increase capacity for shore excursions (and) increase our transportation capacity, whether that’s for pedestrians or motor coaches.”
But after the pandemic “we came back in 2023 with reduced staff with reduced capacity and with 30% more visitors than we had the previous year,” Pierce said.
Another issue is “we struggle to communicate with residents,” she said. An example of that is 29% of residents saying they need more information before deciding if they favor a proposed fifth cruise ship dock downtown, a private project being proposed by Huna Totem Corp. that has been going through an intensive series of municipal government actions the past few years. Meanwhile, a two-berth private cruise port on Goldbelt Inc. land on the coast of west Douglas Island proposed last October — which has had no formal CBJ hearings — has a near-identical 30% of respondents saying they need more information.
“I’m less concerned about the number of people supportive and opposed, and more concerned about the number of people who say that they need more information,” Pierce said.
Opinions are split about the two projects. The Huna Totem dock had 38% of respondents who are supportive or very supportive, compared to 28% opposed to some degree. The Goldbelt dock had 34% of respondents supportive to some degree and 32% opposed.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
