Seattle-based Cruise West operates six small-ship cruise tours in Alaska -- five in Southeast and one in Prince William Sound. Its Alaska-bound ships carry 78 to 138 guests per trip.
Cruise West also offers land tours between Anchorage, Denali National Park and Fairbanks.
In a recorded message on the Cruise West main phone line Tuesday morning, the company announced that it was restructuring with new owners. In the message, the company did not name its new owners or specify whether the new owners had acquired all or a portion of the company. Cruise West officials and their external public relations contact did not return calls for comment Tuesday.
The company said in its phone message that it has suspended all new bookings for now, though its sailings on the Spirit of Endeavor and the Spirit of '98 will launch as scheduled on Saturday. It was unclear -- based on the company's website -- where exactly those two ships were sailing, but they left from Seattle and Portland, respectively.
Southeast Alaska is a top destination for Cruise West, but its cruise sailings to the state appear to have ended for the year. No more Cruise West ships are scheduled to arrive in Juneau this year, according to the cruise ship visitation calendar used by the city. Juneau is where Cruise West passengers board the company's Southeast cruises.
Juneau city officials and state tourism trade officials said they didn't know anything about the Cruise West sale on Tuesday.
The company did not specify whether its Alaska business will be affected by the sale. The company also operates ships that travel to Europe, Central America, Canada, Mexico and the Lower 48.
The company that became Cruise West was founded in the 1970s by Chuck West, a tourism pioneer and bush pilot who began building up Alaska's land, air and cruise-tourism industry in the 1940s.
West, who died in 2005 at 90, married the daughter of a Nome gold miner and ferried military goods across Alaska during World War II. He later settled in Fairbanks where he started a tourism empire that included cruise ships, highway tours and hotels. Facing bankruptcy in the 1970s, West sold his company, called Westours, to Holland America, a global cruise company that is one of the dominant Alaska tourism businesses. Within a few years, West had begun the tour company that became Cruise West.
West was considered one of the founding fathers of the state's tourism industry, and his family had continued to run the business after his death.
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