Ketchikan Gateway Borough Publishes the Resident Sentiment Towards Tourism Survey Key Findings

Ketchikan’s growing popularity, especially as a cruise destination, is bringing a steadily growing number of visitors to its shore every year. While tourism growth has brought many economic benefits, it is putting a strain on the community, its infrastructure and natural resources. The destination is now facing a range of interrelated challenges: over-reliance on cruise tourism, traffic congestion and aging infrastructure, persistent workforce shortages and limited workforce housing, among others. To address these challenges and avoid consequent impacts from unmanaged tourism, the Ketchikan Gateway Borough (KGB) spearheaded a participatory planning process. The planning process brought together about 1,600 residents, businesses, non-governmental organizations, public sector and community leaders across all local jurisdictions to develop a community vision and strategies for staying ahead of uncontrolled tourism. The Ketchikan Tourism Strategy (KTS) is the result of the yearlong participatory planning process.

The Ketchikan Gateway Borough is releasing research findings that have contributed to the development of the KTS, due to be published in spring 2023, these are the Resident Sentiment Towards Tourism Survey Key Findings, and the Online Travel Review Report.


The KTS looks at all of the ways tourism is affecting Ketchikan–both positive and negative–and identifies ways to support the positive effects and reduce or eliminate the negative impacts. The Resident Sentiment Towards Tourism Survey was one of the steps in the KTS development process. The analysis of the survey results provides a comprehensive snapshot of residents’ current perceptions of tourism in Ketchikan as well as their vision for the future.

The survey was open to anyone aged 18 or older who lives or works in Ketchikan. The online survey was deployed from May 9 to August 1, 2022, and had 1,343 respondents. The main topics covered in the survey were:

  • Tourism economic impacts
  • Sentiment about benefits versus drawbacks
  • Impacts on quality of life
  • The environment
  • Resident involvement and engagement in tourism
  • Future tourism development

In addition, the survey included open-ended questions allowing the respondents to express their views on tourism development in Ketchikan. On average, the open-ended questions generated 980 comments. Content analysis was used to derive recurring main themes.

The Resident Sentiment Towards Tourism Survey Findings Report can be viewed here: https://ktntalk.com/15682/widgets/65292/documents/43168

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