Another good year for tourism shapes up; Mat-Su packed already in reservations

It’s shaping up to be another good year for visitors to Alaska.

Tourism leaders say the 2024 season should mirror 2023, with strong cruise ship and airline traffic.

Hotel and motel bookings are very strong for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, said Casey Ressler, president and CEO of the Mat-Su Convention and Visitors Bureau. Hotels, motels and short-term lodging are mostly booked out for much of the summer, he said.

Room rates are edging up to the point that there’s now concern that it might depress business in long term.

“For a small group tour booking for several days, continued increases will add substantially to the cost of a visit,” Ressler said.

For most other parts of the state the visitor season will be steady and without another growth spurt that came in 2023. That’s actually good, because it will allow businesses that serve serve visitors, from hotels to restaurants, day-excursion and river rafting operators, to catch up after the industry came roaring back from a steep slump during the pandemic.

Julie Saupe, president of Visit Anchorage, the tourism marketing organization for the city said there are also signs that the labor shortages that caught employers off guard during the 2022 and 2023 are easing.

College students and teachers on summer break, the pre-pandemic mainstay of the seasonal workforce, appear to be coming back, she said. But there’s still not total recovery in the labor market. “If you know anyone who wants a summer job, a family member or anyone, let us know,” she said.

Jillian Simpson, CEO of the Alaska Travel Industry Association, the official state marketing group, said that while the outlook is good there are still uncertainties, and that some of ATIA’s visitor industry members report increases in early bookings while others report flat bookings or even decreases, at least compared with the post-pandemic surge last year.

Simpson briefed the Resource Development Council, an Anchorage-based business group, on the industry’s outlook on April 4.

Overall, there are reasons to be optimistic, Simpson said. Airlines and cruise ship companies have laid on a lot of capacity to carry passengers. Given the strong U.S. domestic economy and continued curiosity about Alaska, and with a little marketing push, there shouldn’t be a problem filling most of the seats on planes and passenger cabins on cruise ships.

If 2024 looks to be roughly similar to 2023, what’s interesting are the dynamic shifts taking place within the Alaska visitor market.

The most important new development is in a strong winter tourism that is smoothing out the seasonal swings for hotels, restaurants that serve visitors, Simpson said. In Fairbanks, for example, local “bed tax” revenues, mostly paid by visitors, are now stronger in March than in June, which is traditionally one of the strong summer months. Bed tax revenue is the best indicator of the number of visitors to a community.

What’s mainly propelling winter tourism in Fairbanks is aurora-watching, and for that the season starts in October, which nicely dovetails with the traditional wind-down of the summer season in September.

Simpson said Alaska has a unique advantage in the winter aurora season because most other places in northern latitudes where the aurora can be seen have maritime climates that often with cloudy conditions. Not so in dry, clear Interior skies.

What’s also encouraging is that according to surveys 40 percent of summer tourists are repeat visitors, Simpson said. People often come north on a cruise ship for their first trip, she said, and then come back to travel inland on a second trip to see more of the state.

This reflects a high degree of customer satisfaction and it’s also an opportunity to convince the remaining 60 percent to make a second trip, Simpson said.

Meanwhile, ATIA is still working over the 2023 visitor statistics to discerne trends. In 2023 there were 1.95 million passengers on planes flying to Alaska compared with 1.93 million in 2022, Simpson said. When Alaska residents pulled out of this data, there is still an increase.

Cruise lines reported a record 1.7 million passengers on Alaska voyages in 2023, up from 1.17 million in 2022. The 2022-2023 increase mainly reflected 2022 still being a year in recovery from the pandemic, so the numbers were depressed. The 2024 season is expect to look like 2023. “Highway” tourism, mainly people driving to Alaska on the Alaska Highway, increased in 2023 over 2022, also.

While economic impact information for 2023 is not yet available the data for 2022, the year in recovery, shows a robust contribution to the state’s economy, Simpson said.

Visitors spent $3.9 billion overall that year on their Alaska trips with the economic impact of that reaching $5.6 billion, she said. There were 48,000 employed in the visitor industry that year, with $1.4 billion in wages paid. Taxes paid to the state of Alaska totaled $157 million.

Fifty two percent of the visitor spending came during the summer months with 21 percent during the winter.