Tourism

If you’re planning a summer getaway outside of the country, make sure you get your paperwork in order sooner rather than later.

Passports are in “unprecedented demand,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday during a House Appropriations subcommittee budget hearing. In 2022, the State Department issued a record 22 million passports — and 2023 is “on track to break” that record, Blinken said.

The U.S. State Department is fielding half a million passport applications a week, Blinken said. “That’s 30 to 40% above last year, so it’s dramatic.”

The standard processing time for a passport is 10-13 weeks, and an expedited request takes about seven to nine weeks. That doesn’t include mailing time, which can take up to two weeks each way.

“Processing times fluctuate throughout the year depending on demand and we anticipate that they will rise, especially as we approach the busier travel season,” according to a State Department news release.

During the pandemic, “demand went way down,” Blinken said, and the department pulled back the number of staff dedicated to processing passport and visa requests. “Emerging from COVID, we’ve had to build back.”

He said the State Department has hired more staff, authorized overtime and opened satellite offices to process passport applications more quickly.

As pandemic restrictions eased, travel ramped up, with 52% of Americans planning to travel in the next six months, according to the U.S. Travel Association. Travel spending and demand for flights are both higher than 2019’s pre-pandemic levels.

Demand used to be cyclical, with a busy season starting in March and ending in late summer, Blinken said, but now it’s consistently high.

Americans who already have a passport soon will be able to renew it online. The department halted a pilot program “to make sure that we can fine-tune it and improve it before we roll it out in a bigger way,” Blinken said, but “65% of renewal customers for passports will be able to do so online, once this program is fully up and running.”

For those looking to travel to the U.S., the median wait time for visitor visa interview appointments is about two months, half as long as a year ago, and it’s shorter in many parts of the world. Blinken said the department is prioritizing visas with economic impact, like those for students, temporary workers and business travelers.

“In category after category, we’re actually getting back to and even better than pre-pandemic levels,” Blinken said, touting the fact that so far in fiscal year 2023, the department has issued 18% more non-immigrant visas than the same period in fiscal year 2019.

Immigrant visas “are a whole other issue,” Blinken said.

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Ketchikan is expecting nearly 1.5 million cruise passengers to visit this summer. If the projections hold, it would be the community’s biggest cruise season to date.

According to the latest draft schedule, Ketchikan’s cruise season kicks off April 20 with the arrival of the Norwegian Bliss in Ward Cove. That’s one of the largest cruise ships that sail in Alaska waters – carrying up to 4,000 passengers. About a quarter of the season’s passengers are scheduled to arrive at Ward Cove, the private terminal eight miles north of downtown.

The first port call at Ketchikan’s downtown docks is scheduled for May 2 when the Carnival Miracle ties up at Berth 2. The season is scheduled to ramp up quickly from there, with the community’s first six-ship day expected on May 18.

Some Fridays during the summer months will see a total of seven large cruise ships tie up in the Ketchikan area, though only six are scheduled to be in town at any one time.

Some 1.1 million people are expected to arrive at the city’s downtown docks over the course of the season. They’ll be split fairly evenly among the city’s four berths, with about 21% at Berth 1, 26% at Berth 2, 29% at Berth 3 and 24% at Berth 4.

Altogether, Ketchikan is expecting 632 port calls throughout the season. The last call downtown is scheduled for Oct. 5, but ships will continue to dock in Ward Cove at least two days a week through the end of the season on Oct. 27.

Ketchikan city leaders are soliciting feedback ahead of the cruise season. The city is taking online comments about the cruise ship calendar through March 31. Those will be shared with Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska, the company that handles scheduling.

City officials are also soliciting comments on downtown traffic, parking, pedestrian access and more with a separate online form. City Manager Delilah Walsh said Thursday that the city is not considering any major traffic changes in the immediate future but is open to suggestions.

“If there’s something that we can incorporate for ‘23, that’s great. If not, I plan to do something similar in September or sometime post-season in order to get feedback for real changes that we can make in 2024, when we’re not in this crunch-time schedule,” she said at the March 16 Ketchikan City Council meeting.

She said the city’s biggest traffic priority is ensuring that loading and unloading zones are designated. There’s a public meeting scheduled at the Ted Ferry Civic Center from 4 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 21.

A recent study found that two-thirds of the world’s glaciers could disappear by the end of this century.

That may sound pretty far into the future, but in Alaska those frozen landmarks are a strong attraction for the state’s tourism industry.

For at least one glacier-focused company, Seward-based Exit Glacier Guides, which takes visitors to its icy namesake, the end is already in sight.

“The difference from the glacier over the past decade is mind-boggling,” said Brendan Ryan, the company’s founder. “It’s a completely different topography out there than it was, you know, even really six years ago.”

The receding Exit Glacier is located at the edge of the Harding Icefield just west of Seward, and it’s shrunk by more than 2,300 feet since 2004.

In 2005, Ryan’s company started taking hikers out through a backcountry trail that took them directly onto Exit Glacier. They now offer helicopter tours and ice climbing as well, but the guided hikes that they’re known for are becoming more challenging.

Ryan said it’s getting harder and harder to access the glacier from the trail.

“Rather than it being a gentle step up, it’s literally a sheer wall of ice because it’s melted so far back from the sides of the cliffs where it used to be butted up against,” he said.

These days, Ryan said they often have to cut stairs into the ice to get up onto the glacier, and those stairs usually melt away by the next day. They’ve also had to lengthen their tour times and implement a number of new safety measures.

“To see the difference from when we started running out there, to what it is now, it’s unrecognizable,” Ryan said. “It’s almost emotionally hard for me to go out and be on Exit Glacier anymore. So I don’t do it very often, because it is so much different. It kind of hurts, if that makes sense.”

In January, a study published in the journal Science found that glaciers around the world are melting faster than anticipated, and at the current rate of global warming, two-thirds of Earth’s glaciers could be entirely gone by 2100. That would have drastic consequences for sea level rise and for the billions of people who rely on that runoff for everything from drinking water to irrigation.

In Alaska, the impacts are visible now.

Mike Loso is a glaciologist with the National Park Service based at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.

“I like to say that in Alaska, the glaciers are not ornaments on the mountains,” Loso said. “To a large extent, they are the mountains.”

He explained that glaciers are an iconic part of the state and an integral part of many Alaskans’ lives.

“Many, many people in Alaska have had the experience of walking on glaciers, skiing on glaciers, snowmachining on glaciers,” Loso said. “You don’t go and just see one off in the far distance.They’re a regular part of our lives in a lot of ways, at least for many of us. And that’s changing, and it’s going to change even more. Our landscape, as we know it, is really being changed wholesale.”

Because they’re so large, most of Alaska’s glaciers won’t go extinct any time soon, he said, they’ll just shrink out of the views we’ve become accustomed to. Loso said that many of our tourism patterns are oriented around where glaciers are now. Exit Glacier and the Kenai Fjords are popular because they’re easy to get to from the road system.

“And so they’re hotspots for tourism, and we have businesses and communities that have developed around those hotspots,” he said. “Some of those hotspots are not going to be any good for viewing glaciers in 100 years or even in 50.”

It’s unclear how fast and how far the glaciers will retreat, because the degree of change depends on how much more we heat the planet. Loso said this new study illustrates that we can substantially reduce the amount of glacial loss if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“The glaciers of the future are going to be responsive to the choices we as a society make,” Loso said. “And so, though some additional loss of glacier mass is inevitable, the magnitude of that loss is in our hands.”

According to Loso, the National Park Service is now partnering with the researchers behind the January study, Carnegie Mellon University and author David Rounce, to refine their survey model with specific observations of glacier change in Alaska.

In the meantime, tourists will continue flocking to communities like Seward, where the harbor comes alive every summer with tens of thousands of people eager to see the glaciers and wildlife of Kenai Fjords National Park.

Kirsten McNeil is the marketing manager for Major Marine Tours. She said the company hasn’t started planning for a future without tidewater glaciers, but viewing them is a vital part of their business.

“We would have to change our entire operation,” McNeil said. “As far as where we go, the routes we take, what we’re telling passengers we see. I believe it would happen gradually over time, but it would definitely make us change our operations and what we’re promising that passengers will see.”

For businesses like Exit Glacier Guides and founder Brendan Ryan, though, the timeline is much shorter.

“Eventually, it’ll mean that we don’t run our operations at all at Exit Glacier,” Ryan said. “And each year, we think that’s an inevitability within the next couple of years.”

Ryan said his mindset at this point is to not look too far into the future. He’s just trying to eek out one season at a time.

Guided e-bike tours could come to Juneau for the first time this summer.

iRide Alaska has applied for a permit from the city to use the West Douglas Pioneer Road for e-bike tours. According to the permit application, the company would offer three tours per day, six days a week from May 1 to Oct. 30.

Reuben Willis, one of the co-owners of iRide Alaska, spoke at a Juneau Assembly Lands, Housing and Economic Development Committee meeting on Friday. He told city leaders the e-bike tours would help the company offer more activities to tourists and generate sales tax for the city.

“We think this could be a win-win,” Willis said.

Tours would cost $149.95 per person, he said, and a small portion could go to the city. iRide Alaska pays a $3 user fee per person to the city when they take tourists to the Rainforest Trail. Willis said they could have a similar policy for the West Douglas Pioneer Road.

That extra funding would be welcome, said Juneau Lands and Resources Manager Dan Bleidorn. At the meeting, he said upkeep for the city-owned road costs $10,000 to $20,000 per year.

In the summer, Bleidorn said, the gravel road is used for hiking, biking and firewood harvesting. The Nordic Ski Club grooms the trail in the winter. The city has also allowed the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to study bats there and the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor nearby streams.

“This actually isn’t a trail, it isn’t a road, it’s more like driveway access to city property,” Bleidorn said.

Whether it’s a trail or a road could make or break iRide Alaska’s plans for e-bike tours. Christopher Mertl, chair of the city’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, said e-bikes aren’t allowed on Juneau trails because they’re considered motorized.

“The Parks Service, the Forest Service, everybody is trying to figure out where this gray mode of transportation fits,” Mertl said. “I just want to offer a little bit of caution before we jump into this with both feet into the pool here, that it may have repercussions beyond just this one proposal before us.”

The lands committee forwarded the permit application to the full Assembly. The Assembly’s next meeting is on Monday, Feb. 27.

City leaders expect 1.6 million passengers to visit Juneau this summer. It would be a nearly 50% increase from last year’s estimated 1.1 million.

Each of those visitors generates money for the city through fees charged to cruise ships: a $5 marine passenger fee, $3 port development fee and $5 state commercial passenger vessel fee. If the 1.6 million passenger expectation becomes reality, they would generate $21.5 million in revenue.

“We’re gearing up for a really, really big season this year,” said Juneau Tourism Manager Alexandra Pierce.

Pierce has proposed putting that money toward a range of city services and projects. They include $10 million for the Seawalk, $2 million for Marine Park improvements and $1 million for the proposed Capital Civic Center.

A 2019 settlement agreement with the Cruise Lines International Association Alaska limits the city’s use of marine passenger fees. Some projects require approval by the tourism industry. This year’s list  includes proposed improvements to Homestead Park, the viewpoint on Douglas Island directly across from downtown Juneau. Pierce said that project could involve rebuilding the staircase down to the water.

“We’re pretty encumbered on how we can spend the funds, but we also want to make sure that we’re spending them in a way that not only supports the visitor industry but also creates lasting assets for the community, which is why something like the Seawalk is a major priority,” Pierce said.

Some of the allocations came from project proposals submitted by city departments and the public in December. For example, Capital Transit proposed adding information screens at the transit center to help tourists use city buses more easily. The proposed list includes $75,000 for more signs at the transit center and at Peratrovich Plaza by the cruise ship docks.

“An interesting thing that’s happened in the last year is an uptick in the number of tourists using the city bus and taking it to where it drops off on Dredge Lake [Road], which is still about a mile from the glacier,” Pierce said. “We’ve realized we need to improve signage and wayfinding for that new increased use.”

The list also includes $50,000 to study seasonal worker housing. Other proposed allocations would support police, emergency medical services and street cleaning.

Juneau residents can send their comments to Pierce until March 17 by mail to the city manager’s office or by email to alexandra.pierce@juneau.gov.

Those comments will be submitted along with the proposed list to the Juneau Assembly’s finance committee. The Assembly will consider the final list during its budget cycle this spring.

After hours-long tours up the Stikine River or down to the Anan Wildlife Observatory, visitors to Wrangell often step off the jet boat and ask, “Where’s the nearest toilet?” But Wrangell’s only downtown public restroom facility is a small brown building with just two toilets.

This year, Wrangell Island is expecting around a 50% increase in the number of cruise ship stops compared to last summer — and last summer was pretty packed. Although Wrangell’s city dock can only fit one mid-size or large ship at a time, one day last May saw three ships: one at the dock, and two anchored out in the Zimovia Strait.

“That’s going to put over 1000 passengers hitting the streets of Wrangell with no place to go potty,” Stikine River Jet Boat Association Executive Director Caitlin Cardinell told borough assembly members at a meeting last April. “The majority of the downtown businesses here do not have public access restrooms or the capacity to provide for the public.”

Out of the nearly 40 businesses in the downtown Wrangell area, only three have public access restrooms, Cardinell said. Two of those establishments are bars.

Wrangell’s local government thinks it has found a solution that will help fill the gap and save the borough money. They’ve purchased two high-end port-a-potty stalls from online auctioneer eBay.

Unlike the recognizable blue or green of regular portable toilets, these stalls are white and have their own sinks. They’ll be connected into the borough’s wastewater system on a corner lot near the city dock, eliminating the need for a truck to pump out sewage.

At a meeting in January, Borough Manager Jeff Good told the assembly that Wrangell won the potty stalls for $3,099, plus just over $800 for shipping. The borough will still need to purchase an accessible bathroom stall as well, he said.

“Hooking [the stalls] into the sanitary sewer system, doing some of the bench work we want to do, and if we put a fence on the backside of it as well, we’re probably into it for around $50,000 total,” Good said, continuing: “So saves us a significant amount of money.”

The original cost estimate for procuring new potties was double that, if not more. And speaking of doubles, the new toilets will more than double the number of standalone stalls in Wrangell’s downtown area.

Wrangell isn’t the only Southeast community struggling with seasonal restroom solutions. Sitka, which sees far more tourists than Wrangell, implemented its own temporary solutions last summer and is still on the hunt for a permanent fix to the need for more stalls when tourists are in town.

At the meeting last April, Cardinell told Wrangell Assembly members that dealing with restroom capacity sooner will pay dividends for the community down the line.

“I think this is a really important issue because tourism is one of the top three driving economic industries in this town,” Cardinell stated, “And I believe that if we do it sustainably, we can continue to help that grow.”

Wrangell’s first cruise ship of 2023 is scheduled to arrive on May 11 — the Ocean Victory, which can carry 200 passengers. Borough manager Good says he expects the first two new toilet stalls to arrive in Wrangell in the next few weeks.