Last week, the cruise ship Crystal Serenity sailed into Nome. Ferried in from the offshore vessel, 850 of the cruise ship’s passengers took the day to tour the city. 850 passengers accounted for a roughly twenty-five percent increase in Nome’s population, and for local businesses, that meant a hypothetical increase in profits. But some business owners are saying their expectations for the day weren’t met.
Airport Pizza manager Ayyusue Katchatag says that she only saw a handful of cruise ship passengers stop by to eat. “We had a few customers, a couple pairs, a single, and maybe a group of four,” she says. Katchatag thinks that most of the cruise ship traffic was directed to the blueberry festival and Front Street.
Planned in conjunction with the arrival of the ship, the Mini Convention Center hosted the blueberry festival, where Nomites and vendors from around the Norton Sound region sold crafts and displayed local culture. Co-Business Owner of Nomemade, Kim Knudsen, participated as a vendor at the festival. Despite the cruise ship’s arrival, she says that most of her sales came from people in the community. Knudsen says that, “even with some of the smaller items, I didn’t get the impression people were buying much. They could take home smaller items of jams or jellies… but they just weren’t buying as much as the locals were buying.”
To encourage commerce, the Mini Convention Center was made an official stop for the tour buses shuttling passengers around Nome. Knudsen adds that the tourists came in waves and, by afternoon, had dwindled.
Crystal Serenity passenger Marc Sola was a part of the morning peak at the blueberry festival. But he wasn’t really looking to eat at a restaurant here. “I haven’t had anything to eat here. I’d just had breakfast before I came here, so it wasn’t that big a deal to me.”
He said that his plan for the rest of the day was to walk down Front Street and see the sights.
Local businesses will get one more shot at selling their wares next year, however. The plan for Crystal Cruises is to send an even bigger ship through the Northwest Passage in the late summer of 2017.
