The Bahamas, Saint Lucia, Cabo Verde, Casablanca, and now, maybe, Haines? The world’s largest cruise port operator wants to lease Haines’ Port Chilkoot dock and add it to a portfolio of global holdings.
Haines Borough officials said last week they had been approached by representatives from Global Ports Holding, a Turkey-based company, that reported hosting 17.6 million passengers at its more than 30 global cruise ports last year.
Former Skagway mayor Andrew Cremata, acting as a paid representative of the company, first broached the possible dock lease last fall, according to multiple borough officials. Cremata did not respond this week to a request for comment.
Borough manager Alekka Fullerton said she met late last month with Cremata and Colin Murphy, Global Ports Holding’s regional head of business development. Murphy this week did not comment on the potential deal.
Exact lease details were not discussed during that meeting, Fullerton said, but she and the assembly intend to hold a public meeting later this month.Theoretically, the company would present more information to residents at that meeting.
Based on the company’s other dealings, it’s likely the borough would see two major impacts from a lease: more cruise ship passengers and more borough revenue.
The company’s nearest port is in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, where it signed a long-term lease in 2022. That deal followed a failed bid to lease Ketchikan’s municipal cruise dock in 2020.
Under the Ketchikan proposal, the company would have taken on control, management, and maintenance of the facility.
The twenty and thirty year leases on the table offered large sums of money to Ketchikan: at least according to the company’s pitch, compensation to the city could have totaled $140-212 million over the length of the lease. Ketchikan’s city council ended up voting down the lease, 4-3, maintaining the dock’s public ownership.
There are other considerations, too, besides just the total amount of compensation.
With public ownership, Ketchikan was charging cruise lines a per-passenger berth tax, bringing revenue into city coffers. Haines currently does the same, with fees at the Port Chilkoot Dock expected to bring in $818,500 this year.
Federal law requires those revenues be spent on cruise-ship related improvements, and Haines’ revenue is restricted to a fund that only spends on the dock itself.
During its 2020 negotiations with Ketchikan, Global Ports Holding argued that if it collected those fees and then shared them with the municipality, those funds could be freed up to use for any purpose.
The additional millions for Ketchikan likely would have been fueled by an increase in total visitors.
According to Global Ports Holding’s annual report from 2025, passenger volume “underpins, directly or indirectly, most of our revenue and is the key to successfully delivering organic growth.”
Despite being a global behemoth, the company isn’t on the public-facing side of things; it has a grand total of one google review — a one star review from a Spanish user — which reads “Worst company to work with, go away! Run!”
Rather, the company’s dealings would likely be with the cruise lines themselves, advocating for Haines as a more frequent destination.
“They can grow the cruise ship industry here, with their connections, in a way I can’t do,” said Haines tourism director Rebecca Hylton.
The annual report talks about big picture dealings — “the global cruise ship order book,” for instance — as determinants of which ships go where. Getting into that game, Hylton said, would require the borough government take on duties like sending staff to Miami.
Whether residents want more cruise ship volume is an open-ended question. A 2025 survey found a majority of Haines residents supported cruise ship volume holding steady, or increasing slightly. Only 16% of respondents preferred a “much higher” amount of cruise ship business. There was, however, a spread of opinions, including a higher rate of support for the cruise industry among younger survey respondents.
Haines currently lags well behind its nearest neighbors, Juneau and Skagway, in terms of cruise business. Some see a larger cruise industry as a potential boon for the local economy.
Right now, it’s difficult for local tour operators to run a business solely on cruise ship passengers docking in Haines, said Barbara Nettleton, owner of tour-company Takshanuk Mountain Trail.
Now, Nettleton’s business relies heavily on the Haines-Skagway fast ferry, which delivers a predictable stream of customers to Haines from Skagway cruise dockings. But in the past, when Nettleton was targeting Haines cruise and independent travelers, the flow of customers wasn’t reliable enough to hire staff.
“Last year we decided to go back into the Skagway market, and now we have crew that have complete weekly schedules,” she said. “If we had ships regularly calling into Haines, it would be easier to hire appropriately. Skagway could be more of a supplemental market.”
Hylton acknowledged that many residents would likely only support an increase to a certain point, if at all. But broader industry trends may force a change, regardless of local preference.
“I think the cruise ship industry is moving toward a Caribbean model, with complete control over cruise ship guests at private islands,” Hylton said. According to Hylton, in Mexico or Belize, that might look like a gated-off shopping area at a port guarded by private security. Closer to home, it looks more like Huna Totem Corporation’s Icy Strait Point or Port Klawock, she said.
Cruise visitation is currently trending up in Southeast overall, which has to some extent masked movement away from ports like Haines to the specialty, private ports, Hylton said. But if the trend continues, she warned, Haines could lose the industry.
Earlier this year Haines lost an offer from American Cruise Lines that would have seen the cruise line contribute money to Letnikof Dock repairs in exchange for long-term guaranteed use of the facility.
Soon after withdrawing its offer to Haines, American Cruise Lines finalized similar deals with the Chilkoot Indian Association and the Wrangell and Petersburg boroughs.
Fullerton said that in her recent meeting with Global Ports Holding, the company’s representatives “intimated” that they were discussing similar possible deals with other communities in the region.
That introduces some time pressure, said assembly member Gabe Thomas.
“I know these port companies looking at Klawock, all these other small places, so we can’t sit on it too long,” he told other assembly members at last Tuesday’s meeting.
With little solid information yet, the near-universal answer on the issue from borough officials has been, “it depends.”
Said Hylton this week, “it’s all going to be about how the lease looks and if it’s the right fit for the community.”