Tourism Best Management Practices

August 25, 2022 – Tourism Best Management Practices (TBMP) is a voluntary program put in place in 1997 to help address and mitigate the impact of tourism on the community, as well as address concerns from both residents and the industry.  Kirby Day is the spokesperson for TBMP; he gave us really great insight into the program. You can read the TBMP guidelines or call the hotline at (907) 586-6774! By calling the hotline and addressing your concerns, you are part of making tourism better in Juneau!

“It started back in 1997 with myself and a number of different tour operators, owners, managers, to try to address impacts because we saw the growth of tourism back in the mid 90s. We had three straight years of 14% growth in the industry. Now, back then it was only five hundred thousand people coming, but still, 14% was a big number. So, we started this back in the mid 90s because we saw the city becoming concerned by the impacts.

“It didn’t make any sense to continue to antagonize the community with the growth of tourism, so we took it upon ourselves and that’s how it started. I think we started with 15 guidelines and we’re up to about 100. It gives an outlet through the community to share concerns. And doing that and having a discussion resolves things 85% of the time. Or at least we end up in a position where I’m talking to that person and we may not agree on everything, but we’re talking and that’s tremendously important.

“You have to give the city credit because they let us do this, they let us start this program, and they made infrastructure improvements on our recommendations. You can see progress and you can see results which I think is really important. Again, not solving everything, but in a lot of ways, dealing with a lot of issues.”

- Kirby Day