IKALUKTUTIAK/CAMBRIDGE BAY
The cruise ship Crystal Serenity was the tourism talk of the year. The 820-foot, 68,000-tonne, 13-deck luxury liner carried approximately 1,650 international passengers and was the largest cruise ship ever to transit the Northwest Passage.

The Crystal Serenity was the largest cruise ship ever to transit the Northwest Passage when it did so this past summer. The vessel is set to return in 2017. - NNSL file photo

The Serenity's voyage began in Seward, Alaska, stopped off the coast of Ulukhaktok, NWT, and was bound for New York on its 32-day Arctic sail, accompanied by an icebreaker escort, the British Royal Research Ship Ernest Shackleton.

The vessel stopped in Cambridge Bay on Aug. 29, doubling both the population of the hamlet for the day, and the season's tourism intake, Vicki Aitaok of Qaigguit Tours told Nunavut News/North at the time.

The Serenity was one of four passenger vessels to visit the hamlet this past summer, but the community expects this number to pick up.

"With the Franklin finds, there is way more press and interest in the Northwest Passage," said SAO Marla Limousin.

Statistics from the GN show that 25 different cruises came through the fabled Northern route in 2016, making 59 community visits. These numbers have doubled since 2010.

"There are companies branding based on the Northwest Passage. There's more romance to it."

She said the Department of Economic Development and Transportation feels that Cambridge Bay will be a definite stop along the way. The hamlet is working on an economic development strategy, in which tourism plans are included.

"What we need to do is develop more experiences," she said.

One main focus of the strategy includes a heritage park.

The park itself was planned to preserve historical buildings in the hamlet, but also to create a space where visitors could congregate.

"For cruise ships where there are larger volumes of visitors at one time, you can have it as that mustering point, the orientation point, the meet-here-at-the-end point."

The park is being built near the site where zodiacs land and launch.

Shipborne guests are not the only tourists in the territory.

Business travelers make up as much as 69 per cent of the available target group. Limousin said Cambridge Bay expects to see an increase in business traffic once CHARS opens up for science this year.

She said since the traffic is already there, focus should be on providing experiences that make people want to stick around for an extra day or two.

The community also wants to invest in training.

"We have young people we want to employ and the visitor wants to meet those young people and people who are locally born and raised here to find out what is going on, but they don't know how to present that information."

She said information and history about Cambridge Bay should almost be scripted, and then the youth can add the component of their own experience.

"2016 was almost like putting training wheels on. In 2017 we will have a more robust program."

While over $120,000 was reported to have been spent in the hamlet during the visit, much of it was related to a Nunavut-wide arts festival held simultaneously. Limousin said she has no way of knowing how much money stayed in town.

She said visitors coming on Arctic cruises are as a rule interesting, well-educated, and kind.

But they also pay a lot of money for their passage and expect a certain calibre of service.

The GN's assistant deputy minister of Economic Development Bernie MacIsaac said this service is only possible through communication.

"Probably the worst thing you could do is over-promote the territory," said MacIsaac. "We have to make sure that there is a balance between how hard we promote the territory and the availability of products."

He said each community has business opportunities, but these need to be organized and understood for what they are, and their capacity.

"There's been stories where a cruise ship has shown up in a community unannounced or the community didn't know it was coming."

Or times where a hamlet is excited for a visit but the ship never shows up.

"I heard one story where the cruise ship spent a grand total of six dollars."

Like the hamlets, the GN doesn't currently have concrete numbers when it comes to economic benefits of tourism. It is working to identify trends and understand available revenue in relation to the infrastructure required for tourism development.

"We're still trying to figure that out," he said. "We need facts and we need more facts."

The territory is creating standard regulations for the cruise operators, new branding and tourism training.

"If you look at jurisdictions in the Arctic, in Alaska and Greenland and in Europe, they all have substantial economic activity going on because of cruise ships."

Nunavut, he said, is just getting started.

"(We have) the opportunity to shape it in such a way that the environment is protected, that communities do get meaningful benefits and that people that are on these ships have a meaningful experience.

"Everybody will learn from last year. We'll learn, the cruise operators will learn and the communities will learn."