Royal Caribbean Group Plans New Juneau Port … Without Telling Juneau

Royal Caribbean Group and Goldbelt Incorporated, an urban Alaska Native company, are partnering to build a new cruise port in Juneau, Alaska. The location of the port, which will be located on Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act land on Douglas Island, was chosen partially to held reduce congestion in downtown Juneau.

The only problem? According to Seatrade Cruise News, neither company bothered to tell the city of Juneau about their plans.

The announcement of the project comes just one day after Juneau officially declared voters had rejected a “Ship-Free Saturday” proposal.

Designs for the new port, which will utilize the existing whale-watching tour operations facilities, feature two floating berths overlooking the Chilkat Range. The port will be recreated to look like an 1800s Alaska Native Tlingit village, where cruisers will experience Tlingit history through stories, art, songs, dance, and traditional foods.

Guests will depart direct from West Douglas Island onto whale-watching tours or shuttle boats to Mendenhall Glacier, which according to Goldbelt will remove nearly one-third of bus traffic from Juneau’s most congested roadways.

Additionally, the location of the port alongside Steven’s Passage would “offer an environmental advantage, reducing time, speed, and fuel requirements for ships sailing north Skagway or west to the Gulf of Alaska…”

“Goldbelt has long sought to establish a cruise terminal and destination centered around Tlingit history on the backside of Douglas Island,” said McHugh Pierre, president & CEO of Goldbelt, Inc. “We look forward to the prospect of bringing this sustainable, culture-rich cruise ship terminal to life in partnership with Royal Caribbean Group, providing community solutions to local transportation and economic development issues.”

The company believes the port would also benefit locals, as it will serve “as an economic driver for the second Juneau-Douglas crossing and Douglas Bench Road, which have been city priorities for more than a decade.”

This is the second project in Juneau where Goldbelt and Royal Caribbean Group have partnered to benefit the community and guest experience. This past cruise season, the two companies worked together to donate wireless internet equipment that provides public access to high-speed Starlink Wi-Fi, in order to reduce the impact on the residential network.

Should plans continue, the facility is projected for completion during the 2027 Alaska cruise season.

Whether plans will go forward remains to be seen as the City of Juneau was caught off-guard by the announcement.

As quoted in Seatrade Cruise News, Juneau Visitor Industry director Alexandra Pierce said, “We were blindside by this. We were unaware of this plan and are disappointed they didn’t bring the city in earlier in this process.”

She added that the “major development” could fundamentally change things in Juneau, and she called for a public and city process, saying that Douglas Island isn’t zoned for cruise development.

She also called out Royal Caribbean Group for being the last member of the Cruise Lines International Association to sign the memorandum of agreement that capped daily berths and for being the only cruise line that had threated to sue over ship-free Saturdays.

Though land the new port would occupy is Native land, Pierce said any Douglas Island cruise calls would be subject to the current daily ship and berth caps.