Ketchikan is expected to get more cruise ship passengers than Juneau for the first time ever this year due to voluntary daily limits the capital city and cruise industry have set on ships and visitors, Juneau’s tourism manager said Jan. 15.
The margin is slight since Juneau’s passenger total is expected to be comparable to the record 1.69 million passengers visiting in 2025, according to Alexandra Pierce, the City and Borough of Juneau’s tourism manager. But she said a five-ship-per-day limit that took effect in 2024 and a daily limit of 16,000 passengers (12,000 on Saturdays) “have changed things in the region.”
“Ketchikan will have more passengers than Juneau for the first time in 2026,” she said during a Visitor Industry Task Force meeting. “That’s a direct result of our limits.”
It means Ketchikan will take the top spot for the number of cruise passengers in Southeast Alaska.
Royal Caribbean Group’s decision to reduce sailings to downtown Juneau this year and beyond appears to be the reason Ketchikan will have more passengers, Pierce said in an interview after the meeting.
A subsidiary, Royal Caribbean International, is reducing the number of ships arriving downtown Juneau from four in 2025 to three in 2026 — but is still sending four ships to Alaska, stopping at other Southeast ports such as Icy Point in Hoonah as well as Ketchikan.
Royal Caribbean is expected to begin docking up to two ships a day — and 500,000 passengers per season — at a two-berth private cruise ship port that Goldbelt Native corporation plans to open in 2028 on land it owns along the northwest coast of Douglas Island. The question of whether that means two of the current limit of five daily ships will be diverted to that port or if Juneau will allow up to seven ships a day is not yet resolved.
But a private cruise facility that opened in Ketchikan in 2021 — The Mill at Ward Cove, about eight miles north of downtown — may offer indicators of how such a facility can affect Juneau’s mass-scale tourism.
Kara Tetley, executive director of the Ketchikan Visitor’s Bureau, said in an interview Jan. 16 that the port at Ward Cove “spreads out the folks a little bit” and more offerings are in the process of being added.
“Our lumberjack show is going to have a second option out there,” she said. “We’ve got some different businesses that are going to be opening up as well this coming year. I believe it’s a multi-phase project. And so, year over year, they’re going to be adding on to that space.”
Tour and city buses are available for visitors interested in visiting downtown, Tetley said.
