It has not been lost on the cruise lines that everything else about a visit to Alaska has gone up as well. Airfare, hotels, car rentals, local transportation, fishing licenses... if it is related to tourism it has become much more expensive lately. Take fishing licenses; residents pay nothing to fish, while visitors must pay $20/day or $55/week. Socking it to the tourists is always a temptation for local state legislatures; Alaska car rental and hotel taxes are also among the highest in the nation.

Essentially, the cruise lines feel they have become little more then the cheap conveyance to get the tourists to Alaska so the local businesses can soak all of the extra revenue out of them. The cruise lines are quick to point out that there are always other places to deploy their cruise ships. They don't need Alaska.

That is a tough call, however. The West Coast cruise market is suffering economically. The other major West Coast destination, Mexico, also has Swine Flu worries. Mexico cruises are as ridiculously cheap now as Alaska cruises were last summer. So two non-Carnival Corp. cruise lines just announced they are planning to go to Alaska in 2010; for the first time for Disney, and the first time in five years for Crystal. Both of these cruise lines have a dedicated following that rarely cruise on other lines, so Alaska is still an opportunity to offer their regular guests a "new" destination.

Looking at the long term, however, both San Diego and Los Angeles have just approved massive port upgrade projects to manage bigger and bigger ships sailing to Mexico and sometimes Hawaii. In the case of Los Angeles the upgrade will cost over $1 billion. These won't be completed for several years and the economy should turn around by then.

While the SoCal port improvements are a great start, what the Mexico cruise market really needs is some improvements to the Mexico destinations along the lines of what Royal Caribbean has done in Labadee and Carnival has done in Grand Turk. If the cruise lines can create more excitement for Mexico as a destination then we would see far more interest in West Coast cruises.

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