Virgin Voyages staff welcome about a dozen representatives from the City of Sitka, Sitka Tribe of Alaska, and local organizations as they board the 912-foot red and white cruise ship, the Brilliant Lady, on Thursday.
It’s the inaugural port call for not only the company’s newest “lady ship,” but for the adults-only cruise line as a whole, and is marked by shared champagne, speeches, and the exchange of plaques.
“Virgin Voyages, as a company, is fairly young,” says Sitka Tourism Manager Judson Rusk. “And this is the first time they’ve ever entered the Alaskan market. This is the first ship in Alaska, and it’s the first time to Sitka, so this is a first on a lot of fronts.”
Virgin Voyages is a relatively new company — an extension of the multi-billion-dollar Virgin Group, founded by business magnate Richard Branson, and Bain Capital.
Their first ship was built in 2021. The Brilliant Lady, in 2025. And they pride themselves on not being “your average cruise line.”
Jill Stoneberg, the company’s senior director of sustainability, says for one, kids aren’t allowed. Second, she says they want to give back to the communities they visit by volunteering with local organizations, like Sitka Trail Works. Third, they want their guests to feel connected to the places they visit, so they’ve recently welcomed on board a full-time naturalist to educate about the wildlife and land in Alaska, and a heritage guide from Alaska Native Voices.
“We recognize there are many different Indigenous groups, and they’re speaking from their experience through art, through storytelling, through dance,” she says. “And we’re just really pleased to be able to offer that authenticity to [the guests’] time on board.”
Stoneberg wants to show the delegation a bit about what makes this cruise experience unique, and leads them to the dining room of one of the boat’s many restaurants to talk over eggs benedict and mimosas. Then, she leads them on a tour of the 17-deck vessel, which accommodates up to 2,762 passengers and 1,150 crew.
She leads them through the casino, shopping center, night club, and adult arcade, and even shows them the ship’s tattoo parlor, Squid Ink.
“We’re the first cruise line to offer a tattoo parlor on board,” Stoneberg says. “It’s actually very popular. If you want a tattoo, you have to sign up for it at the very beginning of the cruise.”
Then, she takes them “behind the scenes” to the control room and waste room to walk them through some of the environmental measures the company takes as part of its decarbonization initiative. She says Virgin started off with efficient technologies because its fleet is so young.
“We’re considered a hard-to-abate industry, meaning that it’s very difficult to transition completely to zero-carbon and low-carbon fuels to meet our energy demands,” she says. “But it’s something that the industry takes very seriously, and the goal is to be net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
Stoneberg says the company has started to use biofuels and Climeon technology — which converts low-temperature waste heat from the main engine into useful power — to run its fleet. And three of its four boats have shore power capabilities, which essentially means they can plug the ship into a local electric grid when in port. The fleet also makes 97% of its water on board through a desalinization process and doesn’t provide any single-use plastics to its guests, according to Stoneberg.
Virgin Voyages is the newest of about 25 cruise lines operating in Sitka this season, and its arrival comes at a time when the community of just over 8,000 is still grappling with the recent uptick. Cruise ship traffic has more than doubled since before the COVID-19 pandemic. But in 2025, Sitka voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have capped the number of visitors.
Tribal Council Chair Yeidikook’áa Brady-Howard, who is welcomed up to receive a plaque and say a few words on behalf of the Tribe, says the relationship between the community and cruise companies is complex.
“We are very much the continued stewards of the lands that we’ve inhabited since time immemoria,” she says. “And when we have basically a floating city coming into our own community, we always have concerns about the impact for us. But also we’re responsible for the economic well-being of our people as well, and so we’re always walking that line between hoping for the best in terms of the impact that something like this can have on our community, as well as understanding very much that we require the economic stimulation that these sorts of things bring.”
As the tour wraps up, Stoneberg walks the guests to the entrance of the massive boat, plaques in hand. The delegation exits and makes its way back to town as Stoneberg and the crew wait for the Brilliant Lady’s nearly 3,000 passengers to wrap up their time in Sitka and load up again before they head onward to their next destination. Tomorrow, another boat will take its place with more of the roughly 600,000 passengers set to stop in Sitka this season.
