Planners test possible tourism scenarios for capital city

Planners are floating five visions of Juneau's tourism future that range from doing nothing to actively managing the benefits and drawbacks of cruise and destination travel.

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Planners will share details from three Internet tourism polls and discuss five strategies for managing tourism at a meeting in Juneau on Wednesday, said Bob Harvey of Egret Communications, who is leading work on the city's long-range tourism plan.

"The marching orders are that the city needs to be in the business of managing tourism. At the same time, it's unclear or uncertain how one goes about doing that management," he said. "That's where the scenarios come in and what we'll be talking about Wednesday night."

The planning team has analyzed each of the visions to see what would happen in the real world, Harvey said. The five scenarios are:

Status quo: Juneau would continue on the path it is now, with the community dealing with tourism issues as they arise.

Manage for destination travel success: Juneau's main focus would be developing independent, package and group travel. The goal would be to grow volume, develop appropriate businesses and manage negative impacts. The community would neither encourage nor discourage cruise tourism growth, but would respond to social and environmental issues as they arise.

Manage for cruise travel success: Juneau would grow cruise tourism revenue, develop appropriate businesses and manage impacts to the community and the environment. Destination travel would be left to develop at historical levels.

Manage for destination and cruise travel success: Juneau actively would manage social and environmental impacts and maximize benefits of destination and cruise tourism.

Freeze cruise travel volume and manage for destination travel success.

Under the status quo scenario, the issue of flightseeing noise would be addressed reactively as it has in the past. In the other four scenarios flightseeing would be addressed proactively, Harvey said.

"By 'addressed proactively' we're not saying somebody will do something to somebody," he said. "We're saying that business, the community and community leaders get together to solve the problem. It's not specific, but the assumption is that it would be done by partnership."

The planners define destination travel as visitors who go to a specific area to experience the offerings at that location. Destination travelers tend to know more about a region before arrival, stay longer and spend more than cruise travelers.

Harvey said three Internet tourism polls and a round of community interviews have shown that people are concerned about the negative impacts of tourism, but don't want to do away with the industry or economic benefits it brings.

While 79 percent of poll respondents said the city should manage tourism, 58 percent said the number of visitors should be managed. Safeguarding air and water quality consistently got high marks. So did destination travel, with 93 percent of poll respondents saying they supported an increase, according to the Web polls.

Planners haven't written the questions for the fourth and fifth tourism polls. Harvey said he'd like to clarify responses regarding cruise growth and how it is handled.

"We'd like to spend more time on those questions that cover how we go about it, rather than what direction should we head," he said.

Wednesday's meeting is at 7 p.m. at Centennial Hall Ballroom 2. More information about the long-range tourism plan and Internet polls are available at www.cbjtourism.com and www.juneauempire.com/tourism. The fourth tourism Web poll is scheduled Jan. 5 to Jan. 10.