A series of strategy meetings focused on improving Ketchikan’s tourism industry were held last week at the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly chambers and the Ted Ferry Civic Center.
The meetings were a part the second phase of a four-phase Ketchikan Gateway Borough Tourism Strategy plan sponsored by KGB and spearheaded by George Washington University’s International Institute of Tourism Studies.
According to the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Tourism Strategy Milestones and Timeline on the KGB website, Phase 1 — titled Inventory of Existing Conditions — was conducted from January through April and focused on the current climate in which Ketchikan’s tourism industry exists. Preliminary steps included assessing market demand and visitor use perceptions as well as drafting a situational analysis report.
Phase 2 — Validation and Participatory Planning — is the strategy’s current phase which spans May through July and is centered on validating findings from the initial report, deploying a resident survey and conducting meetings in the community.
Phase 3 will include additional in-person workshops, while Phase 4 will be dedicated to finalizing the study’s findings and packaging them into a final report. An entire breakdown of all the main points of the strategy can be found at kgbak.us/976/Tourism-Strategy.
According to Assistant Borough Manager Cynna Gubatayao, the strategy will culminate with a “destination stewardship roadmap” published by GWU and Confluence Sustainability and will be presented to the Borough Assembly and Ketchikan City Council sometime in March of 2023, at which point, recommended actions will be considered. Such actions could potentially include code changes, depending on what the strategy’s final report recommends.
Gubatayao also stated that the goal of the strategy is “to try and figure out how to balance the needs of the residents against the needs of the industry, and keep Ketchikan a (desirable) place to visit. The end product of this strategy should be an action plan that helps us balance those competing needs.”
She confirmed that the strategy is funded by the borough at a cost of $80,000.
Five focus group meetings with different local groups were held throughout the week in order to gauge public perception of key issues from a variety of perspectives. They included local government and tribes, large and small tourism industry operators, nonprofits and non-governmental organizations and local residents.
In addition, two town hall-style meetings were held to further gauge public perception and allow community members to actively participate in shaping the strategy plan.
The meetings were run by a handful of consultants of varying backgrounds.
Seleni Matus and Julie Klein were two of the foremost speakers at the two events attended by the Daily News — Wednesday’s small business owner meeting and Thursday’s resident town hall discussion. Matus is the executive director of tourism studies at George Washington University, and Klein is the principal for Confluence Sustainability, a consulting firm that partnered with GWU for the purposes of the study.
Jim Powell, a professor from Juneau’s University of Alaska Southeast, was an additional member of the team, and KGB Planning Director Richard Harney also was involved in and oversaw the meetings.
Thursday’s town hall meeting at the Ted Ferry Civic Center began with an opening statement from KGB Mayor Rodney Dial, who thanked the attendees and consultants for their time and effort towards the project.
“I encourage your participation and your honest comments, whatever they may be, because our goal is to maintain what we all love about our home, and manage growth going forward for the greatest benefit of all citizens,” Dial said. “So I want to thank the borough manager, the assistant manager, planning director Harney, staff, stakeholders and the Confluence Sustainability team for the many hours of work to get us to this point. So once again, special thanks to the public for being here tonight.”
Matus, who previously served as the director of tourism for her home country of Belize, followed by stating that some potential issues Ketchikan’s tourism industry faces are not unique.
“A lot of the sort of issues that we're seeing emerge in this beautiful place are the same types of challenges that other destinations face,” Matus said. “So for us, it's just wonderful to be here, to be able to bring some of the experiences from other places to bear and to very respectfully guide this process… because it is your process. And so we're adding a little bit of structure to the process of bringing everyone together in order to get a strategy that we hope is actionable.”
She continued by comparing the growth of tourism in Ketchikan to other ports around the world, stating that the community saw a 34% increase in cruise arrivals from 2013 to 2019 and adding that the same growth extended to independent travelers visiting Ketchikan — determined by the number of annual room nights sold. Matus also stated that there was a 42% increase in rooms sold between 2014 and 2017. She added that the 61:1 ratio of visitors to residents measured in 2010 swelled to 80:1 in 2019, and that the industry’s year-on-year growth in 2017 was 17%, compared to 6% in the Caribbean and 8% in the Mediterranean.
Matus used the metrics as examples of “steady and robust growth” in Ketchikan’s tourism industry over the past decade, but stated that it “is causing some strain in your community.” She explained that community strain in tourism-centric locations is something that is “occurring in many places in the U.S. and around the world.”
One of Matus’ key ideas for resolving “community strain” is to establish a body that oversees tourism operations in Ketchikan. She repeatedly stated that different industry stakeholders should “work together” to benefit the industry as a whole.
“In most destinations, there's usually one organization; it's not controlling, but it's like that organization usually helps to bring all these sorts of different groups to the table and ensure that there's continued dialogue over time,” Matus said. “In Ketchikan, you don't have that sort of convening organization currently, so this presents even additional challenges for you to be able to implement an approach like this over time.”
After roughly an hour of additional strategy overview, the floor was opened to public comment from attendees. Audience participants were asked to write down things they perceived and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats related to the tourism industry and the community of Ketchikan. Their ideas were then read aloud by Matus and Klein before a traditional Q&A session was held, during which attendees voiced their concerns directly to the strategy leaders.
Concerns included tourism’s ecological impact on the environment, reduced availability of housing for local residents, a lack of industry revenue remaining in Ketchikan and business interests being prioritized over those of the community.
One attendee floated the idea of setting a limit on the number of passengers allowed to visit Ketchikan each year in response to what they identified as a problem of “oversaturation,” meaning they believe Ketchikan is receiving too many visitors each year.
Matus acknowledged the idea of a “carrying capacity limit” as something she’s familiar with, but stated that she’s yet to see a successful implementation of that specific strategy in any of the other ports she’s worked with. She explained that some ports in the Caribbean that she’s familiar with have even put carrying capacity limits in policy documents that ultimately “failed miserably at enforcement.” She described capacity limits as “not a useful tool,” and suggested alternative methods of curbing visitor numbers such as increasing cruise ship docking fees past a certain threshold.
To conclude the meeting, Matus encouraged the entire community of Ketchikan to participate in the strategy’s survey, which is meant to measure resident sentiment towards tourism. She stated that 1,205 people had currently completed the survey, and that the target completion is 1,400 — which would be roughly 10% of the population.
The results of the survey will be presented as a part of Phase 3, which will take place in early October. Ketchikan residents can find the survey at https://ktntalk.com/.
*This article was originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News*
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