Princess Cruises has opened bookings for its 2028 Alaska season, fielding 185 departures across 14 itineraries aboard eight ships — the line's most comprehensive Alaska offering to date. The program, now on sale at princess.com, includes sailings ranging from four to 16 days, with homeports in Seattle, Vancouver, Anchorage (Whittier), San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
The fleet roster for 2028 includes Star Princess — the line's newest vessel, launched October 2025 — alongside Discovery Princess, Emerald Princess, Royal Princess, Coral Princess, Crown Princess, Island Princess, and Ruby Princess. Guests will have access to 16 ports of call, including Juneau, Ketchikan, and Skagway, as well as scenic glacier cruising through Glacier Bay National Park, Hubbard Glacier, College Fjord, and Endicott Arm & Dawes Glacier. The season includes 86 visits to Glacier Bay National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Cruisetours and Lodges
Beyond coastal sailings, Princess is leaning hard into its land-based infrastructure with cruisetour packages that bundle sea voyages with multi-night stays at five company-owned wilderness lodges: Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge, Mt. McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge, Fairbanks Princess Riverside Lodge, Kenai Princess Wilderness Lodge, and Copper River Princess Wilderness Lodge. The cruisetour collections are organized into three tiers — Denali Essentials, Denali Explorer, and Denali Escorted — designed to simplify the booking process for travel advisors and guests alike. Select itineraries visit up to four national parks in a single trip, and all feature Princess' exclusive Direct-to-the-Wilderness glass-domed rail service between Whittier and the Denali area, with open-air viewing platforms.
"Our 2028 season brings together glacier-filled voyages, unforgettable wildlife and cultural experiences, Princess Wilderness Lodges and Rail, along with seamless cruisetours that take guests deeper into the Great Land — creating a complete Alaska vacation," said Jim Berra, Princess Cruises Chief Commercial Officer.
Onboard Food and Programming
The hospitality angle extends well onboard and ashore. Through the line's "North to Alaska" programming, guests can participate in culinary events like Cook My Catch — where crew prepare guests' fresh-caught fish — alongside cultural presentations, Native Alaska programming, and Glacier Bay National Park Junior Ranger experiences. Shore excursion offerings include whale watching in Juneau, White Pass Railway excursions in Skagway, lumberjack experiences in Ketchikan, helicopter glacier landings, and wildlife cruises through Kenai Fjords National Park. The Kenai Princess Wilderness Lodge also positions itself as a launch point for salmon fishing on the Kenai River, a draw with significant food-and-beverage crossover appeal for hospitality operators tracking high-end experiential travel demand.
For hospitality and foodservice professionals, the scale of Princess' Alaska footprint — nearly 60 years of operations dating to 1969, five proprietary lodges, and a private rail line — reflects the growing appetite for vertically integrated travel experiences that extend the guest relationship far beyond the ship's dining room. That trend is reshaping how cruise lines and lodge operators think about sourcing, staffing, and culinary programming in remote destinations. Industry observers tracking hospitality trends in experiential travel and food and beverage programming aboard cruise vessels will find Princess' Alaska model a useful benchmark.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
