Gastineau Guiding COVID 19 UPDATE

To our friends, employees and guests – past & future, 

In just four short months, COVID-19 has brought the Alaska Travel Industry to a grinding halt. For the first time in 28 years of operations, we spent our long summer hours off the trails and waterways of Juneau. We have made the difficult (but safe) choice to halt all operations for the entirety of the 2020 season, with the intent to resume operations in April 2021.

We know that Gastineau Guiding is just one amongst the millions of family businesses being impacted by COVID-19. With that in mind, we are actively working to create a set of safety protocols that are respectful to the kind of experience our family and guests would look for on our adventures; however, our understanding of COVID-19 and how to most effectively combat its spread has continuously changed in just six short months. Since we will not be operating until April 2021, we believe it is best to withhold a tour-by-tour specific COVID-19 operating plan at this time. Instead, we will continue to monitor the guidelines put out by the CDC, the State of Alaska DHSS, the City and Borough of Juneau, the Alaska Travel Industry Association, as well as monitoring the evolution of our cruiseline partners’ Healthy Sail Initiative and its guidelines for cruise shore excursion operators like ourselves. We will also spend our winter working with Travel Juneau’s new GBAC STAR accreditation initiative, which will help us better understand how we can create the best sanitization and cleaning procedures for our tours.

As an adventure tour provider, we admittedly feel blessed that our original model of small group outdoor adventures is naturally complementary to safe COVID-19 procedures; still, we anticipate making changes to many aspects of our tour operations, and hope to provide any interested parties with that updated information in the New Year (2021). 

For any guest or staff, future or past, we encourage you to reach out to our offices with any specific questions – including tour specific policies and private tour arrangements – at tour@gguiding.com or at the number listed on our website. We will be in the office all winter, eagerly awaiting a return to whales, to trails and to adventure, in 2021. 

Wishing you health & happiness, 

The Janes Family – owners & operators of Gastineau Guiding since 1994