Visitor numbers to Alaska were nearly flat last summer following a dip in cruise ship traffic, an unusual plateau for an industry that typically sees solid growth.

The state saw just 4,000 more tourists last summer, compared to the previous year, according to a new report commissioned by the Alaska Travel Industry Association.

That’s a bump of 0.1% percent, in a total of 2.7 million visitors.

“A flat season is OK, I guess,” Jillian Simpson, president of the Alaska Travel Industry Association, said in an interview this week.

“It’s not great,” she said. “Certainly it feels like there’s an opportunity for tourism to be growing in Alaska. But it wasn’t a decline. And so that feels like a win.”

Early season last June, some operators reported slightly slower bookings in some sectors, such as international visitors, amid geopolitical and economic concerns caused by President Donald Trump’s global trade wars and rhetoric.

The leveling off in visitor numbers is unusual for the industry, she said.

“We’ve been on a steady trend of growth for several years,” she said, not counting the COVID-related downturn in 2020 when cruise ships to Alaska were canceled.

Also potentially affecting the summer tourism numbers: The group had less marketing funding to reach potential visitors, she said.

That money dropped after the group had used a COVID-related $5 million federal grant the previous year.

Alaska saw about 1.8 million travelers arrive by cruise ship last year, a decrease of 0.4% from the year earlier, the report said.

About 900,000 travelers arrived by air, an increase of 0.8%.

Less than 100,000 people arrived by highway or ferry.

Anchorage snapshot

While most cruise guests visit Southeast communities, about a quarter of them travel to Seward and Whittier, delivering visitors to Anchorage.

That cross-gulf cruise traffic fell 5% from the year before, the report said.

That likely had to do with how cruise lines allocated their ships last year, Simpson said.

The cross-gulf numbers are expected to rise this summer, in part because a new dock in Seward will be available to handle larger ships, she said.

Anchorage bed tax revenues, a tourism indicator, were down last summer, compared to a year earlier, the report said.

The annual income fell to $45 million, falling more than $4 million from the year before, an 8% drop.

Hotel demand for Anchorage last summer was a bit softer compared to the year before, said Jack Bonney with Visit Anchorage, the city’s tourism bureau.

But that trend has recently reversed, with growth in January up from the year before.

Hotel supply was tight last year, with some renovations underway and some hotels in recent years coming off the tourism market.

But the situation for hotel supply has started to shift, too, with growth in that area, he said.

For example, a 141-room Courtyard by Marriott Hotel has planned to open its doors in spring in Midtown, at 4960 A St.

Cross-gulf cruise ship capacity is also expected to grow this summer by 10% to 15%, he said.

That should also help boost visitor numbers, Bonney said.

Advance hotel bookings for so far this year are showing positive signs, he said.

“It appears that, at least for advanced bookings, at the same time last year, we’re ahead of the game,” he said.

A Bangladeshi man who authorities say operated an international child sexual exploitation enterprise involving hundreds of children, including those in Alaska, arrived in Anchorage this week after spending several years out on bail in Malaysia.

Zobaidul Amin, 28, made his first federal court appearance in Anchorage on Thursday.

A federal grand jury in Alaska indicted Amin in July 2022 on 13 charges related to the production and distribution of child pornography, cyberstalking and child exploitation. Law enforcement in Malaysia was prosecuting him on similar accusations.

Amin is accused of orchestrating a vast online sexual extortion ring that resulted in the abuse of minors, primarily from the United States.

“Amin delighted in sexually abusing hundreds of minor victims over social media,” prosecutors said in a memorandum filed Thursday recommending that a judge keep Amin jailed while awaiting trial. “He bragged about causing victims to become suicidal and engage in self-harm. He shared hundreds of nude images and videos of minor victims all over the internet and encouraged other perpetrators to do the same.”

The FBI arrested Amin on Wednesday in Malaysia and took him to Alaska, Anchorage FBI spokesperson Chloe Martin said in an emailed statement.

Amin pleaded not guilty at Thursday’s hearing.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kyle Reardon assigned Amin a public defender and ordered that he remained jailed while his case proceeds.

Amin, wearing a yellow Anchorage Correctional Complex jumpsuit, quietly spoke only two words during the hearing: “Yes,” when Reardon asked whether he understood his rights, and “yes” after Reardon asked if Amin agreed to waive his right to a speedy trial to allow his attorney to adequately prepare.

For more than three years, federal officials sought to have Amin “expelled” from Malaysia, where he was a medical student, to face charges in the U.S., prosecutors said in their memorandum.

Authorities have said they uncovered the sophisticated child sexual abuse material production scheme after a 14-year-old girl told Alaska State Troopers in 2021 that Amin coerced her via social media into sending him lewd images of herself and participating in sexually explicit conduct over video calls.

When the girl stopped communicating with Amin, prosecutors said, he carried out previous threats to distribute the images to her friends and social media followers.

“Dozens of search warrants, subpoenas, and legal process revealed that Amin did the same thing to hundreds of minor victims,” prosecutors said in the detention memo, adding that it was one of the “most extensive” operations of its kind investigated by law enforcement.

But authorities had been unable to extradite Amin from Malaysia, they said.

Malaysian authorities, with help from U.S. law enforcement, also charged Amin for offenses related to the production and distribution of child sexual abuse images in 2022.

He was released from custody in Malaysia after his family paid a bail equivalent to $24,000, according to the detention memo.

The requirements of Amin’s release included that he surrender his passport, not contact his victims or engage in child sexual abuse image conduct, and report to police monthly, according to the memo.

Prosecutors said they were not aware of any violations but added that it was unclear how strictly the requirements were enforced.

Had Amin fled to Bangladesh, he would have been able to evade prosecution because the U.S. doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the South Asian country, according to the memo.

Officials didn’t publicly disclose additional details about the circumstances that led to his arrest and transfer to Alaska or why he hadn’t been moved to the U.S. sooner.

The FBI and U.S. Department of Justice have been working “in conjunction with Malaysian authorities” to get Amin transferred to U.S. custody, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alaska said in a prepared statement Thursday.

A child exploitation and human trafficking task force based out of the FBI’s Anchorage offices investigated the case with the support of numerous agencies, including the Anchorage Police Department and Alaska State Troopers, the Royal Malaysia Police, and a long list of law enforcement entities in Wyoming, Oregon, West Virginia and Florida as well as cities including Atlanta, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Newark, Salt Lake City and Seattle.

JUNEAU — The Alaska Senate has passed a bill that would allow physician assistants with sufficient training to practice under an independent license, removing the state’s current requirement that they work under a formal collaborative agreement with physicians.

Supporters say the change would reduce administrative burdens that can delay and increase the cost of care. But physicians who opposed the bill argue it lowers the bar for training and could affect patient care.

Senate Bill 89, sponsored by Anchorage Democratic Sen. Löki Tobin, passed by a unanimous vote in the Senate on Wednesday, with 18 votes in favor and two members absent. The bill would allow physician assistants to apply for an independent license after completing 4,000 hours of postgraduate supervised clinical practice.

Under current law, physician assistants in Alaska must operate under a collaborative plan with physicians. These plans outline the medical services a physician assistant can provide and require oversight from doctors.

The Alaska State Medical Board regulates physician assistants and authorizes them to provide care only within the scope of their training. Most physician assistants in Alaska work in family practice, though some are specially trained in particular fields. All care must be provided under a physician’s license through a collaborative agreement that also requires a second, alternate physician to sign off.

For some clinics, particularly in more remote areas, finding those physicians can be difficult.

Mary Swain, CEO of Cama’i Community Health Center in Bristol Bay, testified in support of the bill before the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee in March 2025. Her practice employs two physicians to maintain collaborative plans for its physician assistants. She said neither of them lived in the community, and the primary physician lived out of state.

Roughly 15% of physicians who hold collaborative agreements with Alaska-based physician assistants do not live in the state, according to Tobin. At the same time, Alaskans face some of the highest health care costs in the nation.

Jared Wallace, a physician assistant in Kenai and owner of Odyssey Family Practice, testified in support of the bill at a committee meeting in April.

Wallace said maintaining collaborative agreements is one of the most difficult parts of running his clinic. He said he pays a collaborative physician about $2,000 per physician assistant per month, roughly $96,000 a year, simply to maintain the required agreement.

“In my experience, a collaborative plan does not improve nor ensure good patient care,” Wallace said. “Instead, it is a barrier in providing good health care in a rural community where access is limited, is a threat that delicately suspends my practice in place, and if severed, the 6,000 patients that I care for would lose access to (their) primary provider and become displaced.”

Opposition to the bill largely came from physicians, who testified that physician assistants do not receive the same depth of training as doctors.

Dr. Nicholas Cosentino, an internal medicine physician, testified in opposition to the bill last April. He said that medical school training provides crucial experience in diagnosing complex cases.

“It’s not infrequent that you get a patient that you’re not exactly sure you know what’s going on, and you have to fall back on your scientific background, the four years of medical school training, the countless hours of residency to come up with that differential, to think critically and come up with a plan for that patient,” Cosentino said. “I think the bill as stated, 4,000 hours, does not equate to that level of training.”

The Alaska Primary Care Association said it supports the intent of the bill but argued that physician assistants should complete 10,000 hours in a collaborative practice model with a physician before practicing independently.

Other states that have moved to allow independent licensure for physician assistants have adopted a range of thresholds. North Dakota requires 4,000 hours, while Montana requires 8,000 hours. Utah requires 10,000 hours of postgraduate supervised work, while Wyoming does not set a specific statewide minimum hour requirement.

Tobin said the hour requirement chosen in the bill came from conversations with experts during the bill’s drafting.

“When we were working with stakeholders on this piece of legislation, we came to a compromise of 4,000 hours, recognizing and understanding that there was concerns, but also … understanding that it is a bit of an arbitrary choice,” she said.

The bill now heads to House committees before a potential vote on the House floor.