ANCHORS AWEIGH
Alaskan cruises are ready to return to full service after 2 difficult years
Like spawning salmon, Alaska's cruise industry has endured an upstream battle over the past few years. 2020's cruise season in the Last Frontier was wiped out entirely due to something you might have heard of called COVID-19. In 2021, Alaska's traditional halfyearlong cruise period raised anchor three months late, and it took another lifting — as in a centuryold maritime law — to even make that happen.
Which brings us to 2022, with sanitized fingers crossed. Ships offering trips of a lifetime won't have to hibernate like Kodiak bears yet again. If anything, the upcoming Alaska cruising season is shaping up to be more like an insomniac bear jacked up on caffeine.
Barring the unforeseen, from April to October a whopping two dozen or so cruise lines will deploy nearly 50 ships to navigate the Gulf of Alaska for voyages lasting between four and 92 days — longer if you're adding tours to Denali or some of the world's best fishing spots.
What sounds like a modernday Klondike Gold Rush is really just the cruise industry picking up where 2019 started, albeit three years late. Of the estimated 2 million-plus out-of-state visitors who traveled to Alaska in summer 2019, nearly half came by sea, according to a report sponsored by the Alaska Travel Industry Association.
“For many, the cruise industry is their livelihood and Alaskans rely on us to bring excited tourists to visit their towns so they can share their passion for this exceptional state,” said Lisa Syme, vice president of Santa Clarita-based Princess Cruises.
In 2020, the pandemic wiped out the entire season. A truncated
cruise season was the best Alaska could get in 2021 after a state congressional delegation successfully pushed for the Alaska Tourism Recovery Act that temporarily allowed foreign-flagged cruise ships to sail directly from the U.S. without having to dock first in Canada, which had a ban in place at the time.
Seattle and Vancouver are the most popular embarkation ports for northbound Alaskan cruises while Seward and Whittier in the Anchorage area get nods for southbound sails. San Francisco also gets a slice of baked Alaska as the fifth-busiest starting and ending point for voyages to where totems stand, salmon spawn and eagles soar.