25 years of ‘Yahoo, Mat-Su!’

This year, the Mat-Su Convention and Visitors Bureau celebrates 25 years of marketing the Mat-Su Valley to visitors and showcasing our area to tour operators, meeting planners and media from around the world. In those 25 years, the Valley has grown exponentially, but the CVB’s commitment to market the area as a world-class destination remains unchanged.

The CVB started out with humble roots, as a dedicated board of directors that came together in 1986 to form the organization. There were growing pains along the way, to be sure, but now the organization is a four-person team with an additional seasonal staff of six Visitor Center employees, led by a 10-member board of directors.

Our primary purpose is to attract visitors to the Mat-Su Valley, which has a deep impact on the economy of the Mat-Su Valley. When visitors come to our area, they not only spend money on specific tourism items like a night at a hotel or a flightseeing tour, they also spend money at the gas station, at a local restaurant, at the grocery store and more. By attracting these visitors, the tourism industry helps the local economy by generating both direct and indirect spending and keeps those dollars circulating through our community through payroll, taxes, supplies and similar items.

So how do you market an area the size of West Virginia, with distinct differences from one end of the Valley to the other? It’s no small task, but through the years, the Mat-Su CVB has refined a targeted marketing effort that garners our area the most exposure to potential visitors in the most efficient manner.

We reach local Alaskans, domestic visitors, international tourists and group tour operators through several different marketing programs. We also work extensively with national and international media outlets to generate editorial coverage of our area as well. Through all of these efforts, it’s our goal to generate increased visitation and more revenue coming to Mat-Su businesses.

While we have marketing programs in place to reach a wide variety of audiences, perhaps the best marketing resource we have is the community. When residents take pride in their community and let others know why they love living here, it speaks louder to potential visitors than any amount of advertising.

Dennis Brandon, a longtime Alaska tourism industry leader, perfectly summed up the importance of community and the impact on tourism when he said, “If you can’t mine it, catch it or drill it, you can always invite it.”

Invite your friends to visit Alaska and the Mat-Su Valley in 2011. Chances are, they’ll leave saying, “Yahoo, Mat-Su!”

Casey Ressler (casey@alaskavisit.com) is the marketing and communications manager at the Mat-Su CVB.