Cruise Control

As Arctic Sea Ice Melts, Business for Alaskan Passenger Ships Is Booming. Can the Fragile Region Handle the Traffic?

- Stephanie Pearson

WHEN CAPTAIN Dan Blanchard, the fit, bearded, 58-year-old founder of UnCruise Adventures, wants to tag along on his 232 foot Safari Endeavour in Alaska, he often needs to pitch a tent on the top deck for a place to sleep. Blanchard’s six Alaskan expedition ships, which carry 22 to 84 guests and serve as luxurious floating base camps for up to 21-night itineraries, are so popular that his revenue in the state shot from $6 million to $33 million between 2010 and 2016.

Blanchard’s success mirrors the Alaskan cruise industry’s staggering growth. In 2016, a million passengers, about half the state’s yearly visitors, traveled on a cruise ship, generating $2 billion in economic activity. In Glacier Bay National Park, 95 percent of the 485,000 visitors arrived on a commercial cruising vessel. Historically, there have been about three times as many big, thousand-passenger ships in Alaska as small ones like Blanchard’s. That trend still holds, but as interest increases, ships of all sizes are becoming more numerous and extending their stays in the region.

The demand is so great that Princess Cruises recently announced that it will be expanding its 2017 Alaska fleet by 15 percent; Holland America is redeploying a seventh ship to the area this summer; and Seabourn is returning to the 49th state for the first time in more than a decade. Last August, 1,000 passengers paid as much as $120,000 to spend 32 days aboard the 820-foot, 13-deck Crystal Serenity as it navigated the Northwest Passage from Anchorage all the way to Manhattan.