At a recent Haines Borough committee meeting on tour regulations, operator Sean Gaffney made a statement that some people interpreted as a breakthrough or godsend: He said the borough could eliminate the 1 percent tax for tourism promotion, as far as he cared.
If you’re not fond of tourism or you don’t follow local politics closely, you might misconstrue Gaffney’s statement as a good opportunity for the town to eliminate the tax, as some government leaders, environmentalists and fishermen have suggested.
But reduction or elimination would be a tragic mistake. It would undermine local control of the industry, damage independent tourism businesses and hand the cruise industry wide power over local decision-making.
Gaffney’s statement was no gaff. He and other shore excursion operators would stand to benefit handsomely if the tax went away.
A little local history is important to understand what’s going on here and what’s at stake.
City of Haines voters passed the 1 percent tax in 1987, a time when cruise ships were much smaller than they are today, and few ever stopped in Haines. The 1 percent paid a tourism director to promote the town as a destination, primarily to RVers and independent tourists who constituted most of our visitors.
The opening of the cruise ship dock in 1995 brought a steady traffic of large ships to Haines, but in a way that chafed residents. Five years later, citizens voted to tax tours, limit the number the number of large ship dockings, and oppose summer helicopter tours. Tours off the ships were too intrusive, too unregulated and too great in number, voters said.
Royal Caribbean, the company bringing most of the ships to Haines, scratched the town off its itinerary, possibly in retribution. Residents leaned an important lesson: When cruise ships come to your town, it’s on their terms, not yours.
While some tour operators beat up on environmentalists, wrongly blaming them for the ships’ departure, residents slowly learned a lesson: They didn’t need large ships docking to have a healthy tourism economy. Heli-skiing, festivals, outdoor activities, and special events were enough to attract an agreeable and manageable number of visitors to Haines.
But that alternative to sole reliance on the cruise industry only works because the Haines Borough uses the 1 percent tax to advertise Haines to the world, attracting independent visitors.
What would happen if the 1 percent were eliminated? Who would run the visitor’s center? Who would advertise the town? Who would answer questions from visitors and potential visitors? Who would create local brochures and town guides? Who would represent the town at tourism trade shows?
The answer is nobody. Nobody would do those things because no one locally would have the resources – except possibly a consortium of shore excursion operators – and they wouldn’t do it because there would be little money in it for them. Which is the same reason they don’t care if the 1 percent is eliminated.
Tour operators who get their clients off large cruise ships already hold contracts with cruise ships that bring them their customers. The paychecks of shore excursion operators are guaranteed, whether anyone sits in the log cabin visitor’s center or not. The 1 percent is not about them, and never has been.
The 1 percent is money that pays for Haines to have an independent tourism industry, including many small, local businesses that benefit from tourism – like the bookstore, art stores, grocery stores and general merchandise stores. Talk to the owners of those businesses and ask how much they rely on cruise passengers to keep them in business. You’ll be surprised how little it is.
It’s independent visitors and locals who are keeping the Haines retail sector afloat, not tourists off cruise ships.
Now here’s the key part that some people might find hard to swallow: Maintaining that stream of independent visitors and recruiting new ones, over time, take money, continually, in the form of advertising. And visitors, once arrived, need help finding their way about. That’s what your 1 percent pays for.
There’s a myth circulating that the 1 percent tax was intended as “start-up money” that would get the tourism industry on its feet, then be eliminated.
Don’t buy it. I reported on that election in 1987 and such words were never said. What was said by tax supporters was that revenues from the tax also would go toward items like flowers and banners that support tourism but also benefit residents, so the town would likewise benefit.
But there was never any expectation that the tour industry here would be self-supporting. It’s not self-supporting anywhere. The industry’s customers are visitors, and they need constant reminding to come, and some care once they’re here.
It’s true that many towns larger than Haines have privately operated “convention and visitors bureaus” that handle tourism and promotion. Those groups work in larger towns because the tourism industry is big enough in those places to fund an office, typically with help from hefty local taxes on rental cars, hotel rooms and the like.
Haines might be able to cadge together some tiny effort toward a privately operated tour office, but it likely wouldn’t last or be effective enough to much matter. Visitation to the Chilkat Valley would drop. Businesses would shutter. Sales tax income would decline. And shore excursion tour operators would reign supreme, as they would have exclusive control of the only visitors – and visitor industry – in town.
How do I know this? Because I lived in Haines before the tour tax was adopted, and I remember what miniscule efforts were made under the previous model. And what few retail businesses were operating then, and what little sales tax income was generated by tourism.
Tourism has been good to Haines. That’s in large part because the industry here was created by residents, and it remains accountable to residents, who hold a stake in the industry and direct it through the 1 percent tour tax.
It’s something of a novel Haines jury-rig deal, and it’s not cheap, but this model has stood for 31 years now and it has served the town well. And it all rests on the 1 percent tax. Pull that foundation out, and the house crumbles, taking us down with it, and leaving our visitor industry wholly dependent on a cruise ships that are not generous, loyal, or community minded.
You may dislike paying the 1 percent tour tax, but chances are that you would hate the pawn our town would become without it.