SEATTLE – Outside the north end of Sea-Tac Airport’s ticket hall, a cavernous green-and-white-striped tent stands empty but ready for an annual human migration.
Beginning in early May, thousands of Alaska cruise ship passengers will turn the tent into a bazaar of activity three days a week as they rush to check in for their airline journeys home.
As recently as eight years ago, the number of cruise ship passengers beginning and ending their voyages in Seattle was a statistical trickle, just 6,615, hardly enough to justify a fair-weather temporary addition to the air terminal.
But in recent years that dribble has swelled to a torrent as changes in the cruise industry, in ship technology and international politics have put the Puget Sound area on the cruising map.
This year, the International Council of Cruise Lines predicts the cruise business could inject nearly $750 million into the Washington economy.
Consider the numbers:
* 826,000. That’s the number of embarking and debarking passengers that the Port of Seattle, which owns and operates Sea-Tac and the three cruise ship piers on Elliott Bay, expects to handle during the 2007 cruise season. Some 74 percent are expected to arrive in Seattle by plane.
* 3,000. That’s the number of busloads of passengers the airport expects will depart the airport for the cruise ship piers this year.
* 35,000. That’s the number of cruise passengers arriving at and departing from the airport on a busy summer weekend. Many of those passengers take buses, but others hail cabs or rent cars or use public transportation to get to their ships.
* $1.2 million. That’s the average expenditure for supplies, labor and services the Port of Seattle figures each ship call brings to the local economy.
* 191. The number of cruise ship calls on Seattle scheduled from the beginning of the cruise season on April 23 to its end on Nov. 2. In 1999, Seattle had just six cruise ship calls. Seattle this year will host eight ships, two on Fridays, three on Saturdays and Sundays. Vessels in transit to Canada also call there during the spring and fall.
The cruise season is expanding this year in Seattle, said Jean Cox, general manager of Cruise Terminals of America, the firm that operates the Pier 66 and Terminal 30 cruise facilities for the Port of Seattle.
“They’re coming earlier and leaving later,” Cox said. “They used to leave at the end of September,” she said.
* Ninth. That’s the rank Seattle holds among U.S. ports in cruise ship passenger numbers. All of the eight ports with greater cruise numbers than Seattle are warm-weather ports, such as Miami and Los Angeles, or have year-round cruise departures, such as New York. If Seattle hosted cruise ships year-round at the pace it does during the summer, it would rank fourth in the country after Florida’s three busiest cruise ports.
* 14,082. That’s the number of Washington jobs the cruise industry estimates were created in the state in 2005.
Seattle had always been a center for cruise line business, but few ships called there until recent years.
Stanley McDonald, whom many in the industry call the father of the modern cruise industry, started Princess Cruises in Seattle in the ’60s, chartering an ocean liner for excursions during the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. Though Princess moved to California after it was bought out, its land tour arm, Princess Tours, is based in Seattle.
Three other cruise lines – Holland America Lines, Majestic America Cruises and Windstar Cruises – have headquarters in Seattle, though Windstar recently was sold.
The shock of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks made cruise passengers apprehensive about foreign ports, so cruise lines scheduled more cruises to Alaska.
Vancouver, B.C., the traditional jumping-off point for Alaska cruises, couldn’t handle all the traffic, so Seattle became the first alternative. Once cruise industry managers tried Seattle, they liked the results and stayed, even as the anxiety over flying subsided.
The positive business effect of the growing cruise industry helps fill the pockets not just of ships’ suppliers, but also of allied travel industry companies, such as bus and tour firms, hotels and rental car agencies.
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