It’s the time of year when downtown Anchorage sees a flock of tourists, looking to take in an Alaska adventure. While it’s still early, Anchorage tourism officials and tour operators say this year is likely to match last summer, which was a banner year driven by post-pandemic traveling.
Jack Bonney, VP of Destination Services with Visit Anchorage, says hundreds of people have been using the visitor information centers downtown each day.
“Monday, on the 19th of June was our biggest day so far,” Bonney said. “We had 1,276 visitors.”
Like many industries across the world, Alaska’s tourism market tanked during the pandemic. Bonney says the industry was able to come back strong in 2022. This year, he says travelers going through Ted Stevens International Airport are up 8 percent over last year, and more than in 2019, the year before pandemic shutdowns.
“We recovered a lot more quickly in 2022, than I think most destinations in the United States did,” Bonney said. “And so we find ourselves in the enviable position of having to beat what was really, really strong performance in 2022, as other destinations in the Lower 48 are still building back.”
Even though last year saw high tourist numbers, many tour operators weren’t staffed to adequately meet the demand. Mandy Garcia is co-owner of Salmon Berry Travel and Tours, which does travel planning and guided tours throughout Southcentral Alaska. She says this year, her company may need to hire on more workers to keep up with a post-pandemic trend: social distancing from other travelers.
“Post-pandemic, there’s a lot more folks that want private tours, meaning if I have a guide and just those guests, like if we have a private tour, that takes a guide in a vehicle out,” Garcia said. “So we have had to increase our fleet in order to accommodate the additional private tour requests.”
She says her company is on track to have numbers similar to last year, but she says the lackluster summer weather has changed up what kinds of tours can be offered. It’s been cloudy, windy and rainy in Anchorage in May and June, and Garcia says activities like the tour of the Independence Gold Mine in Palmer have had to adjust.
“Generally by this time of the year, you know, maybe we have snow patches, but, you know, this year, there’s a lot of snow up there,” Garcia said. “So we’ve had to modify our tours considerably up there.”
Premier Alaska Tours is also having a strong year, said President Josh Howes. The company does multi-day guided tours that go as far north as Fairbanks through Denali and in Homer and even Yukon Territory. He says 2022 was a banner year for the company, and this year is right on track to match it.
“Last year was a great year,” Howes said. “We really didn’t expect it to be better this year. We expected it to go down a little bit from last year. And the fact that we’re still flat with last year is really quite great.”
Howes says his company deals directly with cruise and airlines, and those industries market heavily to potential travelers. He says that’s driven a lot of Premier’s post-pandemic success.
However, he says smaller businesses that cater to independent travelers don’t have that same level of marketing and aren’t doing as well. Those include travelers planning trips that don’t tie into large tours.
“If you want to see a lot of the smaller operations — the rental cars, the AirBnBs, you know, the smaller hotels and attractions — there needs to be an effort from a statewide standpoint to market to those independent travelers,” Howes said. “And currently, that’s not happening to much degree.”
And while Alaska is seeing a tourism boost, Bonney with Visit Anchorage says other travel markets are going to rebound, and Alaska companies need to keep up the momentum.
“It’s important that we keep our foot on the gas if we want this kind of performance in the future,” Bonney said. “It doesn’t come to us easily because there are places a lot closer than Alaska in most places.”
The Alaska Travel Industry Association is still in the process of doing its 2023 visitor study, but early numbers forecast a high number of tourists through the summer statewide.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
