Alaska Native Corporations Are Building a Native-Owned Cruise Corridor, From Ports to Buses to Lodges
If you're planning an Alaska cruise, check whether your itinerary calls at Icy Strait Point in Hoonah, Whittier's Glacier Gateway terminal, or the new Klawock port. Look at whether your shore excursions or coach tours run through Portage Glacier Cruises or Alaska Coach Tours, both now Native-owned. Juneau's Áak'w Landing targets its first full season in 2028, and Chatanika Gold Camp is scheduled to open in 2027. If you want to see Tlingit culture on the ground, the Totem Pole Trail along Juneau's Marine Way is open April to October.
My read is that this is vertical integration, with Native corporations moving from the margins to owning the touchpoints. Doyon's Jordan Sanford is blunt about the logic: more than 60% of visitors come to Alaska by cruise, so to grow, Doyon needed to be involved. The model has a proven example in Icy Strait Point, where roughly 350 seasonal hires in a town of 950 means anyone who wants a job has one. The irony I like is that a 1912 salmon cannery that once symbolized loss is now a museum anchoring that economy. The winners are shareholders and communities that keep revenue local. The losers are outside operators who used to whisk passengers onto their own excursions. Áak'w Landing in 2028 and Chatanika in 2027 are the dates I'd watch for the network to take shape. If I were booking, I'd find out who operates the excursion before paying, because ownership is now a real differentiator.