To benefit from cruise ships, communities must “organize, organize, organize”

Cruise coordinators from the Bremen with local guides, as well as Vicki Aitaok, the manager of the Arctic Coast Visitor Centre (third from the right), in Cambridge Bay late last month. Aitaok, who greeted cruise ship tourists on their arrival to the community Aug. 28, said the key to gaining benefits from cruise ship travel is to plan well ahead, pay attention to detail, and “organize, organize, organize.” (PHOTO COURTESY OF VICKI AITAOK)

Growing marine traffic in the Northwest Passage is transforming Cambridge Bay into a new port of call.

And if you disembarked recently from a cruise ship anchored at Cambridge Bay, you would have found a warm welcome, even when the weather was terrible.

So it was on Sept. 1, when rain pelted down and winds exceeded 50 km/h.

Vicki Aitaok, manager of the Nunavut Tourism’s Arctic Coast Visitor Centre, said the day when 90 visitors were scheduled to disembark and another 80 were set to board an Adventure Canada cruise in Cambridge Bay was easily “the worst day of the summer.”

The weather was so bad that it was impossible to use Zodiacs to move passengers to and from the ship, Aitaok said.

But departing passengers finally got to shore by hopping off the Clipper Adventurer onto two barges joined together by a tug operated by Northern Transportation Co. Ltd., the Nunakput, to make a kind of sea bridge to the dock.

“It was incredible,” Aitaok said, “The passengers were able to walk out of the ship’s main doors right on to the barges and dock. No zodiacs required.”

On shore, many Cambridge Bay residents waited with vehicles, ready to pick up visitors and take them on a quick shopping trip around the town.

When the departing group finally arrived at the airport, a new batch of Adventure Canada cruise passengers were waiting to head into Cambridge Bay.

There, muskox soup, bannock and sandwich makings had been prepared for them in the Kiilinik School gym.

The entertainment included guitarist Joe Otokiak and his son, violinist Ashley Otokiak, a choir of Grade 6 students dressed up in Mother Hubbards sang “O Canada” in four different languages, and local athletes who demonstrated Inuit games, encouraging passengers and crew to also try their hand at the Inuit games.

“They were so appreciative. They loved every bit of it,” said Aitaok.

Everyone wanted to thank the chef, Louisa Aitaok, who finally came to the gym to meet the people she had cooked for.

Just how much food a hungry crowd of cruise passengers can eat is something that Aitaok said she’ll remember next year.

This past summer, four cruise ships, including the Clipper Adventurer, sailed to Cambridge Bay.

And for the third year in the row, Aitaok was ready— or tried to be.

The Hanseatic arrived Aug. 22, sailing from west to east, starting in Nome, Alaska and ending its journey in Reykjavik.

The German-registered ship carried 160 passengers who paid between $26,000 and $58,000 per person, with full butler service.

The Bremen, the sister ship to the Hanseatic, arrived Aug. 28, travelling from east to west, starting in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland and ending in Nome, Alaska.

Its 160 passengers paid between $23,000 and $45,000 per person, also with butler service

For the Hanseatic and Bremen’s well-heeled clientele, Aitoak recruited guides, including one local German-speaking nurse.

She trained them to take groups on walking tours around town to points of local interest, such as churches, the old RCMP station, the stone church, and the wreck of explorer Roald Amundsen’s ship, which sank near the community in 1930.

Aitaok also organized entertainment, including throat singing and drum dancing by elders.

And singer Tanya Tagaq and her daughter Naja even performed for the Bremen passengers, in an impromptu performance arranged very quickly at the request of the cruise organizers, Aitaok said.

The last ship to call in Cambridge Bay was the Akademik Ioffe, a Russian ship, operated by Quark Expeditions, which arrived Sept. 5 with 83 passengers from around the world.

The passengers were scheduled to arrive Sept. 6 to be transported directly to the community’s airport, but they had requested an arrival one day earlier so they could tour the town, shop and see a performance put on by local entertainers.

When these passengers left, 16 scientists from Russia boarded the ship — but only after touring the town and stopping at the visitors centre.

The only glitch in the well-planned schedules for visiting ships occurred because the crew of the Hanseatic didn’t realize that Cambridge Bay is on mountain time, and its crew turned up an hour early — on central time — to meet Aitaok.

But organizing well ahead of time smoothed out many problems, she said.

Upon arrival, passengers received a schedule of the day’s activities and information about Cambridge Bay.

And before passengers even came ashore, a Royal Bank of Canada employee arranged to go on board to change their euros into dollars.

If passengers couldn’t make it to the post office to mail postcards, they could also leave them with Aitaok to be mailed at the Cambridge Bay post office, bearing the distinctive “Maud” cancellation stamp.

As a result of these efforts, Aitaok estimates that passengers spent twice as much money in Cambridge Bay as they did last year, buying items like art work and country foods from the Kitikmeot Foods plant.

As for the guides, who she recruited beforehand and trained, they received $200 each time they took groups around.

The direct economic impact of the cruise ships visits in Cambridge Bay was more than $20,000, and maybe much more, Aitaok said.

Many other vessels are also travelling through the Northwest Passage, such as the Ocean Watch, a 64-foot yacht funded by the Rockefeller Family and the Tiffany Foundation, and the Arctic Mariner, a small 17.5-foot boat powered by sail and oars.

Her advice for other communities receiving cruise ships and other boats?

It’s simple: organize, organize, organize.

“I do it because I like to do it,” Aitaok said.