Spending the Alaska cruise ship passenger tax: win-Win for tourists and cities they visit.

• Author: Swagel, Will
• Position: TOURISM

Cruise ship passengers debarking in Juneau may be helped through heavy downtown traffic by a fresh-faced young person in a uniform shirt, hat and orange reflective vest, wielding a red-and-white "Stop" sign on a handle. For their relatives back home, the passengers might like to snap a photo of a specially deployed Juneau cop monitoring the crowds on a Segway two-wheeled scooter. If they arrive very early in the morning, the passengers might marvel at the nifty ride-aboard sidewalk-scrubber sweeping up chewing gum and cigarette butts downtown. But, it being so early, they might miss the sign on the scrubber stating: "Financed by the Cruise Ship Industry."

In fact, the passengers themselves paid for all three improvements. Since 2000, Juneau has collected a $5 per head marine passenger fee, meant to offset the impact on local services and infrastructure and to pay for such improvements as would benefit cruise ship passengers. Earlier this year, University of Hawaii economist James Mak noted the Juneau head tax "was the first time an intermediate port in the U.S. had imposed such a tax on arriving passengers." This year, Juneau expects to receive $4.7 million.

VOTERS GAVE NOD

In 2006, Alaska voters approved a $46 per passenger commercial-passenger vessel tax, as well as a $4 levy to pay for onboard observers to document pollution violations by the ships. The same law also set stiffer wastewater discharge standards and, most controversially, mandated more transparency from the industry regarding deals with on-shore tour-givers and retailers.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The State tax called for the first five ports in Alaska to receive $5 per arriving passenger and for the rest of the proceeds to address regional impacts. Juneau and Ketchikan each opted out of the State program and kept their municipal tax. In 2008, communities such as Sitka, Skagway and Whittier started receiving funds from the tax and began planning how to use them. Federal law requires the proceeds of such a tax go for the safety and enjoyment of the passengers who pay the tax and the cruise industry is keeping an ever-sharper eye on how the money is being spent.

In a 2008 article in the journal "Tourism Economics," Mak wrote that other ports such as Seattle, Vancouver and even islands in the Caribbean and off the coast of Italy are watching Alaska as they consider cruise ship taxes of their own.

LOTS OF VISlTORS, FEW RESIDENTS

Skagway is one of the extreme cases where hundreds...