Alaska Uncovered Podcast
Welcome to the Alaska Uncovered Podcast with your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming. Jennie brings you accurate, helpful and entertaining information about Alaska Travel and Life in Alaska. Guests include Alaska travel experts and Alaska business owners, guides and interesting Alaskans. Jennie is a born and raised Seattleite, a former Alaskan and spends several weeks in Alaska each year. She’s an experienced guide and the Founder of the Alaska and Washington travel website, Top Left Adventures. Jennie is joined by occasional co-host, Jay Flaming, her husband for more than 20 years. Jennie and Jay met working in tourism in Skagway, Alaska and also lived in Juneau and Fairbanks together. Jay lived in Fairbanks for 8 years before meeting Jennie in Skagway and grew up in Yellowstone National Park.
Alaska Uncovered Podcast
Sustainable Tourism: Building Community in Juneau with Elizabeth Arnett
How does a town of 30,000 people accommodate 1.6 million cruise ship visitors each summer? Elizabeth Arnett, Administrator of Tourism Best Management Practices in Juneau, sits down with Jennie and Jay to talk about Juneau’s journey to keep Juneau an amazing place to live while welcoming the world.
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Tourism Management Best Practices
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Hey everyone, before we get into the episode today, I just wanted to tell you, someone recently told me that I needed to make sure everyone listening to the podcast knew about my email list. And so I think that's a good idea. So this week and next week, I'm just gonna add this little intro at the beginning to let you know that I have a free weekly email list. It is different content than what's in the podcast. It's like, sort of just in time, things what you should be doing now to plan your trip, or recaps of recent travel I've done in Alaska, um, other things like that. So there's a couple ways to get on there. One is you can just sign up, so I'll put that in the show notes, and then the other is, you can also get on there by doing my free itinerary quiz that gives you it's like a personality test, and gives you some recommended itineraries for Alaska, so I'll put both of those in there in the show notes, in case you want to take advantage of that. All right, let's get into today's episode. Welcome to the Alaska uncovered podcast with me, your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming, my occasional co host and full time husband, Jay and I bring you accurate, helpful and entertaining information about Alaska travel and life in Alaska. Before we start the episode, we would like to thank our Patreon members for making this podcast possible. You can join them at the link in the show notes. We are so grateful for your support of independent podcasts. Enjoy the show. Have you ever wondered how a small community like Juneau, which has about 30,000 residents, navigates busy days with 16,000 or more cruise ship visitors, well, that is what we're going to talk about today. Our guest today is Elizabeth Arnett. Elizabeth moved to Juneau in 1988 with her husband from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and has never looked back. She is the administrator of tourism Best Practices management program in Juneau, when not working, you'll find her totally in love with looking for those unexpected moments that always surprise you in a place like Juneau, with its incredible natural beauty and wildlife. Elizabeth, welcome to Alaska, uncovered. Thank you for being here.
Elizabeth:Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited.
Jennie Flaming:We are really excited to talk to you today. So to start us off, tell us how you got to Alaska. Oh,
Elizabeth:my goodness, I was happily living in Baton Rouge, working at a television station where I had met my husband and but he had been working there for 22 years. Wow, was ready for a change, but hadn't really talked about changing anything. Well, he came up to Juneau to visit a friend of ours who had moved here. That was in the summer of 86 Okay, he came back again in 87 that's when he started saying, I really just feel I need to move to Alaska and live there. It just it called to him, and, you know, he sounded so happy when he was talking about it. I said, okay, and I was perfectly happy where I was. Yeah. I said, we'll go if I don't like it, we're moving back. Yeah, so we packed it up and drove across the country and spent five days in Seattle, where I had never been, yeah, totally fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. Yeah. Had to put the rider truck on a barge and us on a ferry, which was very strange to me, yes. And then three days later, still not in Juneau, on a ferry, and I'm going, What have I done? But then we landed, and the rest is history. This place just got into my heart immediately, yeah. And we moved here in October, and it just kept getting colder and darker. Yes, a girl from the south, yes, right, close, yes. And so the the homesickness The first year was, was something, because I was just missing everybody. But yeah, still this place. Yeah, I knew I was in the right place. It was just,
R. Jay F:you felt like home. You did.
Elizabeth:My husband passed away almost six years ago, and when he did, of course, my family down south and friends down south said you're gonna move back now, and there is no way. Yeah, I can't leave it. I just can't leave
Jennie Flaming:it. Yeah, that's real. It's it's home.
Elizabeth:It is, yeah, and it's incredibly beautiful. Yeah, it really is.
R. Jay F:It's kind of awesome that you, you drove and barged and ferried in because, like, I used to live with for people in Fairbanks and and I felt like. Those folks who had never, who had just flown in and out their whole like, time living there didn't have a sense of like, I remember like, day three of my driving from Wyoming to Fairbanks, when I moved to Fairbanks in 91 and be like, oh, oh, we're real far, you know, like we're real far at having a moment of like, yeah. Anyway, the
Elizabeth:vastness of Alaska, especially up in the interior, it's just breathtaking. Here in southeast it's a little bit different because you can't see to the horizon, because there's a mountain in the way. Yeah, every place you look. I mean, the mountains in Juneau go straight up from the road. Yeah, it's pretty special. Yeah?
R. Jay F:Well, for our listeners, we are recording today here on 800 glacier Street in downtown Juneau. So we are on location. We're on location, and it is one of the most beautiful days I've ever seen and and we have so it's, it's middle of October, so I think it's kind of early for this, but it's a snowy cold day in the mid 20s, but just the view is infinite to the mountains, all right, but the mountains are covered with this just perfect white dusting. And you know, it's these are the days when I think, like, Why did I ever leave this? Yeah, but I, you know, I lived here 25 years ago briefly, and I still remember the days like this just crystal clear in my mind. It's beautiful place. We're really fortunate to be able to record with you here. Glad you're here. Well, you've been here. You've seen Juneau go through some changes. How does like? Tell us a bit about how different a day during the high tourist season here today might be different from, say, 20 years ago.
Elizabeth:Well, I'll relate it back to when I first got here, the friend whom my husband came to visit was still living here, and one of the first few days when we were here, we were standing on the beach in Douglas and, you know, we were just marveling at the view back over to Juneau, yeah. And he said, at that time, in 1988 he says it's hard to believe that 250,000 people a year want to come see this place where we live. You know, I was thinking 250,000 people according to then, I wasn't much of a big traveler. I had no idea what the tourism industry was all about. But yeah, back then it was 250,000 and this year, it's 1,670,000 cruise passengers. And then add another 80 to 100,000 independent visitors on top of that, yeah, you know, eight
R. Jay F:fold increase,
Jennie Flaming:yeah, easily, yeah. It happened in 30 something, 30 Yeah, yep. And has that growth been sort of steady throughout that entire time, or have there been times where there was a sudden jump?
Elizabeth:They have been jumps, of course, for Juneau, which was founded in 1881 with the discovery of gold by Joe Jor and Richard Harris. Yes, at that time, steamships from the San Francisco and coastal California area came up here, bringing supplies for the gold rush, and people hopped on just to come see what Alaska was all about. So we've had tourism from the very beginning with, So back in 1983 84 around the time Travel Juneau was was formed as a visitors bureau, yeah, we were having around 100,000 visitors at that time, and then it started growing. And 1994 we had around 400,000 visitors. The next year, we had 500,000 visitors. And this is growth through cruise ships. Yes, our independent growth has been a little slower because it's harder to get here, right? Expensive trip, yep. So the back then, the residents were starting to get concerned. Last year, 400,000 this year, 500,000 How many is too? Many, right? When they started saying, we need to do something about this. And, you know, naysayers were saying, We don't want our town changing. So in our our community leaders and and tour operators at that time, started having focus groups in meetings, talking about it. And out of that, in 1997 was born the tourism best management practices program, yeah, and what it is, it's a cooperative venture, and it's just an initiative. It's not a nonprofit or anything. It is just a program where the city and borough of Juneau, the tour operators, the cruise ships, the transportation providers, and other interested persons and citizens got together. Letters say, what can we do to make this work? We want the visitors. We want that revenue, but we want to be able to have a life here too, and keep our lifestyle, yeah, you know the way we we love it. And so they decided to do what we call tbmp to shorten up that tourism best management practices, they decided to do a voluntary program of guidelines for every phase of our visitor industry, from cruise ships to tour operators to hotels to restaurants, anybody in that area, can sign on to these guidelines. And then the first year that we had it, we only had like 18, maybe 20 guidelines, and they consist of things like, if your bus is going to be waiting to pick people up, turn the engine off. Yeah. We don't need that extra pollution, just simple things like that. Yeah. From those 18 guidelines to our 2024 book of guidelines, we now have 106 so over the 28 years of the program, which is very mature at this point, guidelines are reviewed each year, ones that no longer exist because that particular part of the industry is no longer functioning. They get removed. And then new guidelines for new problems that have come up come along. One of our we don't have a guideline for it yet, but talking about newer problems, one of our newer problems over the last couple of years, and it's going to get taken care of through the city, and one of the cruise ship companies, cell service has been very much disrupted on big cruise ships. Yes, we've noticed
R. Jay F:that, and we've talked we've talked to guests coming here and said, Well,
Elizabeth:everyone has a cell phone. They hit town, their cell service, and they want to call home and say how beautiful it is, which I love, but
Jennie Flaming:you also still need to use
Elizabeth:there's a lot of work from home now, you know. And so residents were having dropped calls, texts weren't going Yeah, so so that that's a new problem, yes, that we luckily did not have to address. The city took it on. Oh, and starting next year, they're going to have a Wi Fi program that covers downtown the cruise ship passengers can sign on to, rather than signing right AT and T or GCI, which are two local carriers.
Jennie Flaming:Yes, yeah.
R. Jay F:The other thing you know, I've noticed that has really changed, that is it's both streaming and people posting photos and video. Yep, you know when they when they get into contact, then they want to, like, update the world on, on their their adventure so far, of course, and that can be a huge flood of data,
Elizabeth:but people expect to be able to use their phone and do that, and that's amazing, yeah? So I'm really happy the city was able to, yeah, that's cool. That's a great solution, yeah, and
R. Jay F:that's a good thing that, like, that'll improve the visitor experience as well. If you can arrive and have a stable network connection, like, people will really appreciate. That's a good example of, like, a thing that everyone benefits from, yeah, from it like, yeah, yeah. That's the
Jennie Flaming:doing Wi Fi is really nice too, because then for visitors, they won't be roaming also, so it's also better for them, right? And people don't always realize they'll be roaming in Alaska, but unless they have AT&T, they
Elizabeth:will be, yeah? Well, I think most cell plants these days, if you do roaming, they don't add additional cost onto you, like, No, it was in the beginning where they nickel and dimed you to death. Yeah,
Jennie Flaming:yeah. That's true. It's interesting because my, you know, when Jay and I lived here, we had, I don't remember what a company that doesn't exist anymore, but now we have a provider that's not AT& T so we're roaming in Alaska, and so it's just really interesting to see the like progression of how good or bad that's been, or if there's been a charge for it or not, you know, over a long period of time. Cool. So I'd love to hear Elizabeth a few other examples of like, those kinds of challenges, like things that people might not be aware of. Like, what are some of the things for a smaller community like Juno having this many visitors come in on many days of the summer. What are some of the challenges that presents, and what are some of the ways that tmbp has
Elizabeth:been working with that well, one of the big things if, if you've ever come to Juneau, and we hope you do, you'll notice we have a very small downtown core, and the cruise ships do dock right downtown, yeah, but it is a two lane road with a narrow sidewalk on each side, yeah. And then the buildings these, they were built in some of those buildings. Were built in the mid 90s to help accommodate the cruise traffic. But a lot of downtown was built in that late 1800s Yes, the mountain is right there, and on the other side the water is right there. So this road cannot become a four lane highway. Yeah, these sidewalks cannot get any wider. And so one of the things that tbmp has done over the years in creating guidelines for the downtown area is to help manage that congestion. Some of the just off the top of my head, the majority of our guidelines involve transportation, but some of the guidelines are as simple as we have different names for the different passenger lots downtown. But if you're coming out of the Marine Park lot in a bus or a van carrying passengers, you cannot take a left. You have to take a right and go down and go around the little keyhole traffic, yes, come back. You know, it's as simple as that, if you're waiting in traffic to head down into that very congested area, do not block the exit to the library parking garage. You have to let people be able to come out and go, Yeah, little, tiny things like that. Yeah. I
R. Jay F:wouldn't have thought of that. But, you know, it's funny. Last summer, we were here in June on a on a ship, and I noticed busses doing that. I thought, wow, that's really functional. Yeah, that go to the end and turn them because, having been bus drivers, we, we both know they'll like, I was like, that's cool. I that's a really, like, a specific thing that can have a high impact. I can really see that. Well,
Elizabeth:some of them that, again, the transportation part of it is really big in our guidelines, because it's so important, because we have 1000s of vehicles coming and going through downtown, and they are not all tour busses. They are private automobiles, people going to visit somebody down the road or whatever. Alaska Marine Lines and delta Western who are on the South side of town, need to come through town with their deliveries service workers. You know, somebody going out to Thane, which is south of downtown, to work on a washer and dryer. If they are stuck in traffic for 20 minutes, they charge for travel time. Yeah. So one of the another great thing that came out of the tourism best management practices program is we developed a crossing guard program that the city funds. But I noticed that as well manage, you know, just to help keep the pedestrian safe, but to keep the traffic moving, because right crossing guards aren't there the people walk, yeah? Walk all the time. Stop them and control that, yeah, and allow 10 vehicle vehicles to get through before they stop the vehicles and let 100 people cross the street. Yeah, so that's a little dance that takes place. Yeah, several spots up and down the heavily congested part. Yeah,
Jennie Flaming:cool. Is there anything, anything else like that, that you want to share that's like,
R. Jay F:I have a specific question. Just having been a volunteer firefighter in southeast Do you have any Have you worked on the issue of, like, providing medical care to guests arriving? Has that been an issue you you have addressed through tbnp. Well,
Elizabeth:it's always a fear of ours that an ambulance is going to need to go down south Franklin Street, yeah, when the crossing guard is at lunch at the busiest time. But so far, they've been able to do it. And the docks have special places reserved for ambulances, so they will have a spot to park. Oh, that's because, you know, down at the tram lot, as we call it, there, there might be 15 busses and sitting there to wait, waiting to pick people up, but there's a lane that needs to stay free of traffic and a parking spot cool for the ambulances and EMTs to be able to get down to the ships. So cool.
R. Jay F:Well, I want to ask a question. A lot of our listeners are going to be folks coming to visit probably next summer, there will be quite a few of our listeners will be here in Juneau in June or July. Do you have any suggestions for things that how they can behave and and do act and and things choices they can make when visiting places like Juneau or Juno itself, just to make things better for the local community and the process. Do you have any ideas
Elizabeth:you know when, when you're visiting somewhere, you need to treat it with the same respect as you do it in your home, and hopefully you treat your hometown respectfully, our biggest now, I keep talking about the congestion downtown. An awful lot of people on the ships get off, get on a tour bus and get out of town to go, well, watching flight scene out to the glacier or whatever. So an awful lot of people get out of town. But still, if there are 3000 people on a two block sidewalk. It's a lot of people, yeah, but one of the things the city installed some chained stanchions in the busiest section along the sidewalks to keep the people from stepping out into the street. In Alaska, they are seeing a beautiful Eagle sitting in a tree right there. I'm gonna get out and get the best picture I can step out into the street without thinking about it, right in front of a guy. Front of a garbage truck. Yeah, you know, and our drivers, everybody who drives downtown, is very aware. They certainly don't want to hit anybody. But if it's unexpected, it could be a true tragedy. So I would just remind them to stay on the sidewalks, even if there's not a chain to keep you there, because we've seen people step over the chain into the street, yeah? And then here comes a car and they want to step back, but they're more of a step up than it was a step down because of the curve, yeah? But Jay walking is against the law in town, but people do it, but stick to the crosswalks. Yeah? That's where we're expecting to find passengers, yeah, I mean pedestrians, even if, if they're crossing in front of you, if they are in a crosswalk, it's a lot easier, because everybody knows where the crosswalks are. Downtown, there's actually not that it's a small downtown, yeah, totally so. And then when you're out doing the things respect the wildlife. You know, don't try to get up too close to that bear, because as cute and cuddly as the bear looks out at the glacier, they're very acclimated to people being around, but they're used to the people staying on their sidewalk, and the bear has the grass, but they're still very wild, especially the ones with the young cubs or eating a fish, you know. And you want to get up really close and get that great picture, it might and the bear is going to be the one to get punished, yeah, right, you know, if they show aggressive behavior, and that's just not fair, yeah,
R. Jay F:yeah. Same with, like, feed and don't feed animals because, like, you might lure one in for a perfect picture, but then you're making things difficult for that animal for the future.
Elizabeth:Yeah. But the great thing about Juneau is we have such a large bear population, and they are kind of acclimated to a lot of people being around. It's not unusual to see one on the sidewalk downtown. If you do, you back up, you don't go up and try to try to
R. Jay F:the bear. Did a crossing guard, you know, stop traffic for the bear to cross? Well,
Elizabeth:he probably would probably step back,
Jennie Flaming:just gonna get out of the way. But
Elizabeth:in all of the time that I've been here, I don't recall ever hearing that a bear had attacked a black bear had attacked a person here in Juneau, or, you know, they're they're quite well behaved, as long as you leave them alone, yeah, and don't get in their space, you know, read their cues. If they're stamping and huffing, you're too close. Back it up. Yeah. You know, environment well. And wildlife watching is so
R. Jay F:it's funny, that commonality that I hear from what you're saying is that, you know, when you're a guest someplace, you know, be predictable and say, alert. You incredible around here, because again, you saw two eagles, and know, that's very true. Like, be open to, like, pay attention to the environment. That's what you're there to do anyway, you know. And so like, notice what the pairs are doing. Would you weren't expecting it. You've seen them a million times, but notice what the locals are doing, yeah, notice what the traffic signs might be trying to tell you to avoid. Just and I there they were in this beautiful place. But the same is think it is a place like this can be kind of overwhelming when you arrive and you're like, I mean, I just this morning how many eagles I've seen in my life? I don't know, 1000s and 1000s and 1000s, but there was, like a perfect pair of eagles on a next to each other on a branch. And I really kind of wanted to step out into Egan to take their picture. I did not, but that would have been a terrible idea. But it was tempting right to get just the right angle, you know. And I can see where, if you know, you know, if you don't have that, like in the back of your head, yeah, just staying a bit aware of your true when you're up on the glacier or going out or whatever, you will never take a picture as good as what your brain is seeing, right? Be there, actually be there. National photographer. There is a postcard downtown that has what you just saw on it, you know. And I encourage people don't experience Alaska through a two inch screen on your feet a lot, yeah, just let the experience happen to you, not to your phone. Yes, you are speaking our language. Yeah. Like, I always agree with that. I was recently on a pretty epic trip, and I crossed the Northwest Passage, and I spent a lot of time telling folks to maybe take a second, put down their camera and look at the polar bear that's right here. And, you know? And like, cool, great, take pictures of it. But also, like. Like, Listen, you can hear it crunching right now. You know, like that, that experience is so much deeper when you're there than what your photo is. And I just, I really appreciate that as a message. I think it also, and it also makes you more aware. You know, when you're like, just staring through your phone screen, it's when it's easy to back up into traffic or over the edge of the boardwalk and fall and twist an ankle or whatever or drop it.
Elizabeth:So we can make a suggestion here, on your first trip to Juneau, use your phone as much as you want. When you come back, just
R. Jay F:There you go. Yeah, there you go. That's right. Come back. If you're coming here on a cruise, come by. You know, you do fall in love with you now. Then come back and stay in a hotel. And, yeah, yeah. And then really immerse yourself in the in the
Jennie Flaming:town. You know, I was thinking, too, Elizabeth, when you were talking about, like, you know, don't experience Alaska, like, exclusively through your little screen. One of the things like about whale watching that I always tell, well, anyone who will listen, really, is that one of the best things about whale watching, I think, is the sound scape of, like hearing, especially if you can breathe, you know, but also The flapping around and like, it's just, it's so hard to think about that if you're like focusing on, you know, if you're not focusing on that.
Elizabeth:So when you're not looking through your phone, your field of vision is, is a lot wider, yeah, when you're looking through your phone, yeah? And one of the great activities for whale watching is bubble net feeding, yeah. And it's an incredible thing. If you don't know what it is, you can Google it and see images of it. But if you're trying to predict where this group of whales is going to come up out of the water, and you're looking at it through your phone, and it happened just off screen, right? You missed it. You missed it. Whereas if you weren't looking through your phone, you could have immediately seen the whole thing. So I just, you know, just experience Alaska with your, your brain, yeah,
R. Jay F:oh, man, I love it. I've told this story many times in my life, but I once was, I grew up in Yellowstone Park. You know, I'm a horribly deprived person. So I grew up in Yellowstone and I remember a big pile of people long lenses, taking pictures of a bear that was down in a deep valley in the Hayden, Hayden Valley in Yellowstone. And there was a bear 50 yards behind them, and not a single person saw it. They were looking at this bear that was half a mile away. You know, again, very focused on this one spot and, like, missed the thing that was like, I mean, it was right behind. It was actually kind of scary. That is
Elizabeth:the very that is a true image that we have on the backside of our visitors guide this year. Oh, really, yes, a local photographer took the picture and we got permission to use it. But it's a bunch of visitors with binoculars looking in a particular direction, and right behind them is a bear with a fish in its mouth. It's an incredible picture. So that's amazing. Contact, Travel Juneau to order.
Jennie Flaming:love it. I'll have to check it out. Well, um, okay, so, Elizabeth, anything else you want to share about TMBPs work before we transition a little bit to Juneau more generally.
Elizabeth:Okay, so some of the other things that we do, we have a lot of guidelines managing marine tours while watching Oh, yeah,
Jennie Flaming:let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah. And
Elizabeth:those guidelines exist to not only protect the whales, but the whales have their own protection. They have government.
Jennie Flaming:NOAA, right, yep. Um,
Elizabeth:as as, as far as guidelines for how long you can look at a whale, how close you can get to a whale. I mean, those, those are hard rules that they have to abide by. But we also have a lot of residential boaters out there, kayakers, right? Families on the beach, right? So your wake activity is, is something that that a lot of the guidelines are built around respecting the fact that other people are using the water. Because some of the whal Watching boats are big catamarans, yeah? And they throw a big wake coming in and out of oak Bay. It affects the shoreline on people's property, you know. So a lot of guidelines have been built around that. But again, they're all voluntary. But every one of the whale watching operators has signed on. And so when you sign on to this program, it is voluntary. I don't know that I could kick you out if you Right, right, right, wake somebody. But we have a reporting system for all of the different sections. We have a hotline where people can call, and it's a tourism hotline they can call, or they can email. All hotline@traveljuno.com or they can fill out a web form on the tbmp website and say, This is what happened. This is the time, this is the place, this is who was involved that comes to me, or whoever the administrator is, and then I forward it to the operator. Or if somebody wasn't specifically called out, if it was a whale watching boat, I send it to all of them, yeah. And then they respond back saying we were not in the area at that time. Oh, oh, that was our boat. We have talked to the captain, you know, and reiterated to him the guidelines and the rules around this kind of behavior, blah, blah, blah. And then that information goes back to the person who did the complaining, so the residents know that they have a voice. That's kind of too that is a key element for tourism best management practices to even be able to work. I mean, you can have all kind of guidelines in the world, but if somebody's following them, and you can't complain about it, yeah, right. And a lot of times it's their bus number 506, out on Egan drive was blowing black smoke. Yeah, that driver may not have no even No no no. So we get it to the bus company. They get the bus picked and we report back. Thank you for letting us know it's been taken care of. Yeah, so. And then each month, we compile all that information, and we have three different types of reports. One of them is a strict This is the day, this is the time, this is the area of town. This is exactly what the complaint said. Because if it's a phone call, I transcribe it, yeah, unless it's obscene, for some reason,
R. Jay F:oh, that was probably the answer. Damn
Elizabeth:star, star, star. They were really mad, and who it was sent to and what the response was. So there is a, it's called a call log. Sometimes it's like 60 pages long, yeah, format, yeah. And then we do a compilation of, like, aircraft complaints, whale watching complaints, cruise ship complaints, whether it's noise pollution or or this that speed, you know, all the different segments, and then we compare those year over year. And course, you never want to have a whole lot of complaints. But from my perspective, the more complaints the better, because it means people are using the program right to get their frustrations out, rather than putting them on social media, yeah, or just talking with each other about that frustration?
R. Jay F:Which can really prevent create kind of an us and them feeling that's like, this is outside of our community, not part of it. Yeah. So this probably seems, it seems like a really important data too, about like, what's going on, to help inform your your you know, as you I was surprised to hear you say, how living these best practices are, you know that they're constantly it's really cool. I can imagine that, you know, you get a bunch of calls that are like every time those ships show up. I can't call you know, or I can't call my, my, you know, my plumber, because, and you're like, Oh, well, maybe we need to address that. It seems like a really critical part of the plan. I wouldn't have thought of that,
Elizabeth:but I can see that. So say over the season, tourism, best management practices might receive let's say this year, 250 calls or emails or web forms, right, that are getting taken care of. That is only a very small portion of the complaining that is going on. Manager gets, assembly members get sure that the operators themselves get, I mean, people will call them directly. So we're just sort of a little micro look to sample what's happening between our residents and our city, but without tourism best management practices, I am confident it would be a lot worse, because one, there would be no place to complain, so we wouldn't see the trends like the cell phone trend, yes, all of a sudden becoming a big issue, but the people would be a lot more frustrated because the operators wouldn't be nearly as responsive, because they have guidelines, and when an operator signs on to be a member of tbnp, they are saying, Yes, I'm going to be a member of tbnp. Going to follow these guidelines, and my employees are going to know what the guidelines are, and they are going to follow them,
R. Jay F:right? Yeah, and just knowing Yeah,
Jennie Flaming:it's a really cool it seems like a really kind of powerful way to build community, to like, providing like a place for people to have some accountability, and also for residents to like work through some of those frustrations, because I'm thinking about what you're saying, Elizabeth, then without the work that you're doing, the complaints would just be kind of scatter shot all it would be hard to collect the kind of data that you do about like, hey, the cell phone tower. Is really a problem, or black smoke coming out of busses that's really a problem, or, like those kind of specific things that can be really hard to get traction on, you know, if it's just sort of a free for all right, kind
R. Jay F:of, once you feel like a collection of of conversations about that, you can you can really dial in. One
Elizabeth:of the biggest challenges we have with our tourism best management practices is getting the public to know about it. Now this program is 28 years old. We advertise on the radio. Every year we have members doing things like we love being members of TBMP, we have, we've got crossing guards out there. Please pay attention to them and give them a thumbs up, because it's a hard job standing out there in the rain trying to manage people that don't want to be managed. Things like that. But we were the our local visitors bureau traveled. Juneau had a travel Fair last April, and so we had a TBMP, had a table there for the first time, and I had made some magnets that had the tourism hotline, the tourism email address, and the URL for the web form for people to stick on their refrigerator, so if they saw something, but you're not supposed to call on your phone when you're in the car. When I got home after you parked, they wouldn't have to try to find that phone number, just stick it on the fridge. Yeah, 75% of the people who came by the table had no idea this program was available to them. So after 28 years of putting it out there, a lot of people still it's not on their radar. Yeah, that there's something like this, yeah? So that's one of our challenges this year, is to to find new avenues. So we did create a Facebook page, yep, which, how do you get that out there? Yeah, new Facebook page. It's a baby that needs some tending. Yes, and our new avenues for for getting the word out, I was even thinking putting on a an ad at the movie theater during the summer months, you know, because that's a little captive audience. But yeah, you know whether it's gonna sink into somebody's head or not, that that's our biggest problem is, yeah, actually getting the people to know that this is there for them, yeah, and how much tourism best management practices and our operators and cruise ships and transportation providers and the city have done over the years, yeah, to keep this in check, from when We had 100,000 visitors in 1984 to 1.6 7 million visitors this year. The COVID years kind of spoiled our residents a little bit, because in 2020 we had zero cruise ships come to town and very few independent passengers. So everybody got a taste of what it was like not to have anything happen here in the summer. Yeah. And then in 2000 Well, that was 2000 22,021 ships started coming at the end of July, so we only have a short two month, and not all the ships came, yep, you know. And then in 2022 all of them came back, but they weren't necessarily full. But 2023 they came back heavy. People are traveling. They're ready to get back out of the house, kind of Yeah. So that was a big, big jump between 2022 to 2023 500,000 more people came to town the right 2023, than they did in 2022 that's big. That's a
Jennie Flaming:really, really again
R. Jay F:for a town, a town of 30,000 people as well, you know. But
Elizabeth:luckily, we have so many shore excursions and things for people to do, yeah, whale watching when it first started back in 1994 95 we had one company that said, Oh, we should take some people out to look at the whales. You know, little six passenger boat, yeah. Now we have like 21 operators who are dedicated to whal watching. Some of them also do sport fishing, but pretty much all the sport fishing people will take people whale watching, because our whales are there. Where
R. Jay F:we were June, we were on June a lighthouse tours, yes, a whale watching trip. And it was they've
Jennie Flaming:also been on the podcast, friends of the very beginning, like episode seven or
R. Jay F:something, early adopters, yeah. But anyway, absolutely I hadn't. I had never been whale watching in Juneau before. I've been at Sitka, but I never, and it was absolutely epic, like just amazing. Well,
Elizabeth:one of the problems with the growth in whale watching and the growth in whale watching operators is, how do you manage how many boats are going to be around a group of whales? Yep. So last year we had some. Meetings with the well, watching people because they were getting flamed in social media for having too many boats. I mean, people taking pictures and stuff. And so they formed their own Association out of those meetings called Southeast Alaska. Well, watching Association. And they came up with their own guidelines, which became TV and P guidelines for how they were going to handle how many boats could be around, from 100 yards out to 500 yards out, and then from 500 yards out further, and how they were going to take turns so that all of the passengers would have opportunities to see the whales, because you can't hog the whales. And the whale watching contingent is very good on this point. Once the passengers are on a boat, the sale has been made. Let's make sure they have a good experience. So captains do share information between companies about where the whales are. Yeah, you know, it looks like this is a really slow one, but I heard there was some bubble netting going on over here, you know. So they do share that so that all of the passengers can have that good experience. Rising
R. Jay F:tide floats all boats, right? Yeah,
Elizabeth:it's a competitive, yeah, once they're out on the water. You know, there are very few issues between the different Yeah.
R. Jay F:I was really impressed, actually, to see how collaborative they the folks were being when we were there, yeah, so they were, they were taking turns in and out, and we, like, you know, went in and had our chance, and then, yeah, it was great.
Jennie Flaming:I thought it was cool to you that on the boat that we were on, the captain said, like, we're gonna move on to some other areas now. And I thought that was cool. And I think most guests and on tours appreciate that kind of they're like, I got a chance to see it, and now someone else will. Or, you know, somewhere else, maybe there's another cool opportunity that I'm gonna get to see and I think travelers also appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, it might mean that you got a few less minutes in one spot, but, like, overall, like you were saying it's like, better experience. Well, you, you
Elizabeth:have to take the whales into consideration. Yeah, right. They're also residents. They're living their lives, yeah, raising their babies, and they're trying to eat all the food they can before they take that long vacation back to Hawaii, yeah? But it's an amazing thing to hear a whale breed, to watch a whale breach, to see whale lunch feed, see a baby slap its tail, yeah, I mean, and they just are doing their thing, and we get to go watch it. And yeah, how fortunate is that? But the controls and guidelines from tbnp help make that a whole lot smoother operation out on the water. Because if it weren't, it would free for all. Yeah, you know, absolutely,
R. Jay F:you know, Elizabeth, I am really impressed to hear how mature this program is, and I know a lot of folks are interested in similar things around the world. Really appreciate hearing you share this, you know this is a program that's working, and it's, it's and it's ongoing, and I think that's
Elizabeth:well over time, we've had inquiries from a lot of Alaska coastal communities and even some international communities that were having the issues too. And now, with so much over tourism, because everybody is traveling after COVID, it's more important than ever. Yeah. And as a matter of fact, I'm going to be talking on a phone call tomorrow with visit Portland out of Portland Maine. They're interested in hearing about the program. Yeah? And my predecessor, Kirby day, who voluntarily managed this program for 26 years. Bless his heart. He he always said, If you catch a can or you Sitka, are you Sweden? Want to use any of the elements of this program, we'll be glad to provide you everything that we've done and make it yours at no charge, yeah? I mean, it's Wow, make them recreate the wheel well, we have a really mature program, and start with the easy parts for yourself, and then, you know, bring in the more difficult things. But you have to have buy in from your city. You have to have buy in from your tour operators, and you have to have buy in from your residence, yeah, in order to do this, yeah, and the cruise lines are very cooperative putting, you know, like people downtown were complaining about the movie screens at night, showing movies. Well, we discussed it with the cruise lines, and they agreed to guidelines that not only will they not have the audio blasting over downtown, they just won't have the screen on at all because that flickering bothers somebody. Yeah, but it's amazing how the level of tolerance from one neighbor to the next door neighbor, it's very much different some people. Helicopter noise will drive them up the wall, yeah? And the the person next door to them say, I didn't even notice it, right? But for the person that is driving up the wall, we have to take them into consideration, yeah, this is their home. Yeah, this is their life. So the helicopter noise is an issue that tbmp can't do too much about because it's governed by the FAA, right?
Jennie Flaming:But and helicopters are noisy, and
Elizabeth:the helicopters are noisy, but in a town this size, no matter which direction they fly, they're going to be flying over somebody's house, yeah, unless they move out into the middle of the tongas forest, right? And that probably will never happen, but they did. The FAA says they can go up as early as seven, come down as late, or start their last tour like at eight o'clock. Well, they have shortened those times in consideration of Juneau people. They don't go up before eight or 830 their last tour will go up at seven, down by 830 or nine, yeah, you know. So, I mean, they're doing what they can, but all of these people are businesses,
R. Jay F:yeah, you know, got to make money for the employees make money. And
Elizabeth:the in investments, in the helicopters and in these boats, and then, yeah, just a small tour. Yeah, an investment in a small tour. There's a small tour that does a augmented reality tour down at sandy beach. Wow, it's amazing. But they had to invest in iPads. They had to invest in a lot of graphics. They have to invest in permits to use a trail, because it's a new property, and you have to recoup that in three or four months. That money. It's like it's hard to say we want to put enough regulation. Well, one of the great things about TV MP is it's voluntarily regulating yourself, rather than having the government make the rules. Because government is broad stroke, and there are punishments involved here. You just get, you have to give an answer back, and you're admonished, but, you know, by residents, but it's, it's not a law, and one of the things they wanted to do was to be proactive and see those issues coming, rather than having to be reactive to the city saying, Well, we're going to have to do limited entry on this particular tour,
R. Jay F:at which point, yeah, then things become even harder to work around. And yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's a way to head it off and get more wins before Yeah. Well, Elizabeth thinks I feel like we should probably go to our wrap up questions. Yeah, that's what I was Yeah. I was just gonna say we should take an intermission, yeah, and come back and ask our focus, unless there's anything you want to share about tbnp As a last, last word before we
Elizabeth:go, No, and just again, if anybody out there is listening, is involved in a community that's having issues now, most of our issues are coastal, right in nature, our small town in nature. But if you just want to see what we've done, to see how maybe your operators or your city, can, you know, help with voluntarily controlling things, rather than ending up with a big mess of laws to have to follow. We are happy to share that's very generous.
Jennie Flaming:And we're gonna put, yes it is, and we'll put the website in the show notes too, so people can check out cool. Well, we're gonna take a short break, and then we'll have a couple wrap up questions for Elizabeth when we come back. Hi everyone, Jennie, here, I hope you're enjoying this episode so far. If you're listening in real time, it's January, and if you're planning a trip to Alaska this year, please, or in the future, please. Let me help you. I love meeting you and talking about your trip, hearing what's really important to you hearing what you're struggling with, whether that's what to include or cut out of your itinerary, or where to stay, or whether or not to rent an RV, or what tours, or any tours, or anything like that. I absolutely love these meetings with you, my listeners. They are definitely the highlight of my week, other than, of course, talking to our amazing guests. So book a time today, and it's $47 for a 30 minute consult. I can also plan your entire trip for you. So if you want me to do that, I can, and I do, and I also love doing that, but many people just need some help from a consultation, and that is awesome. So either way, you can book a time through the link in the show notes, and if you want to see what it looks like for me to plan your whole trip for you, that information is also down there in the show notes, including the pricing for that which. I agree. Bye. How many days you write 10 Herring is all right? I hope to meet you on Zoom or on the phone, whichever you prefer. Now back to the show. All right. We are back with Elizabeth Arnett, and we are talking about Juno and sustainable tourism and best management practices for tourism in Juneau. But before we let you go, Elizabeth, we want to ask you a little more generally about Juneau. So before I ask this question, I'm just going to say that I think that Juneau is one of the two best food cities in Alaska. That is my personal opinion. The other one, by the way, I think, is Fairbanks, but there's some stiff competition, but so I'd love to know if you have a favorite restaurant here, and because it's Juno, we'd let you get away with more than one. Well, it's cheating, but it's too hard.
Elizabeth:Well, it depends on what I'm doing or what I'm feeling like eating. Yes, one of my, my favorite restaurants is the hanger on the wharf. It's right downtown. Has a beautiful Harbor View, and that's always a draw to me, to have that beautiful Harbor View. They have a very varied menu, where you go from salad to burger to win any to salmon tacos. I mean, I really enjoy that. And then there's, oh my gosh, there are just so many. At one point, we read something at travel Juneau that Juneau had the largest ratio of restaurants to population of any city United States, we 12 restaurants at the time. Of course, that's also county McDonald's, I'm sure, but there's just a lot of variety. We have a lot of Filipino food here. We have a big Filipino population, because they came over for the mining interest in the beginning, and I have
R. Jay F:stayed and very long term Filipino population, yeah,
Elizabeth:and so. But I think overall, probably I've been to the hangar more than I've been to any place else, mostly because it's a lunch thing and it's the view, yeah, I'm going for Yeah, but um, one other best restaurants are, are when my friends catch a king crab, or Dungeness crab or king salmon or halibut or whatever, and say, Come over to eat. Yeah, that's my favorite
Jennie Flaming:restaurant. Yes, absolutely, that is a good restaurant. Not the first person on this podcast to say that exact same thing? Yeah, yeah. Love it cool.
R. Jay F:So just as the last word, maybe like, what is, what is one thing you would like a future visitor, guest, resident, employee, coming to Juneau to know about Juno before they get here.
Elizabeth:Well, there's a long list there, but they need to know, if they haven't done their homework. They need to know this is a rain forest, and chances are it's going to be cloudy, Misty, drizzly. We don't get a lot of hard downforce unless we're having a storm, but we like to call it our spa rain, where it
R. Jay F:just great, a gentle miss.
Elizabeth:We tend to frown on umbrellas. Umbrellas are for wimps. Just
Jennie Flaming:choose your hood and go right. Yeah, it's very Seattle too.
Elizabeth:But also just to know you are in the middle of a 17 million acre evergreen forest, and you are breathing some of the cleanest air you're ever going to breathe, especially if you get out of the immediate downtown area, out by the glacier, or up on a glacier, if you do the flight scene or hiking up to it or out, well, watching it's it's the air is amazingly clear. You can see forever. You can see the trees on the mountaintops across Lynn canal. Yeah, no, it's just
R. Jay F:mount Robert, just up, just up that high. And, yeah, oh
Elizabeth:yeah, the tram is a lot of fun to to go up 1800 feet without having to hike it. love doing that. Yeah, and get up there for those views. And it's, it's just such a beautiful, beautiful area with the mountains and the water. Yeah, you can't beat
R. Jay F:it, you know. Elizabeth, it almost seems like you like it here,
Elizabeth:you know, I think I'll stay.
R. Jay F:You've given it, you've given it a test run. You're ready to stick with it, yeah, thank you so much for being here. Yes,
Jennie Flaming:thank you so much for being here. Elizabeth, we really enjoyed chatting with you, okay, well, thank you so much. You.
