A cruise ship leaving Seattle
It was the best of times and now the worst of times. Vancouver, with more than 900,000 Alaska-bound passengers in 2009, is down this year to less than 600,000. Seattle, with 846,000 passengers this year, will lose two ships and more than 75,000 passengers in 2011.
Cruise business peaked in 2002, when more than one million passengers boarded ships here for Alaska. Seattle began emerging as an alternative home port to Vancouver in 2000, when Norwegian Cruise Line announced it would be using this U.S. city as a home port.