Flights present options

Last week, the inaugural flight from Reykjavik aboard Icelandair touched down in Anchorage, as Southcentral Alaska welcomed not only a plane carrying European tourists and new opportunities, as well.

Like Icelandair, JetBlue and Virgin America have started service to Alaska, bringing more and more options for travelers looking to visit Alaska. The introduction of these flights not only brings more air lift to Alaska, but also a healthy competition that helps keep airfares relatively low. On certain flights from Anchorage to Seattle, for example, you can find a roundtrip seat for $250, almost unheard of as recently as a summer ago.

From the tourism industry’s perspective, this is fantastic news. The Icelandair flights are particularly exciting, because it gives European travelers a new, much quicker option to get to Alaska. From Europe, with a quick stop in Reykjavik, they can get to Anchorage quicker than we can get to Florida, for example. This access makes Alaska highly competitive among other U.S. destinations for the European market.

According to research from the Alaska Travel Industry Association, these travelers are important to our local economy — international visitors tend to stay longer, and they spend more per day than domestic travelers.

In the last week, several European groups have been experiencing all Alaska has to offer, including the Mat-Su Valley. The Mat-Su CVB hosted a group of tour operators from the United Kingdom who are looking to build Alaska tour packages due in part to the Icelandair service, and several European travel writers were in Southcentral Alaska, giving us more exposure in influential publications in those markets. These “FAM,” or “familiarization,” tours are important because the operators and media members get to experience things first hand, and ultimately are able to sell their packages more effectively based on their new knowledge.

JetBlue and Virgin America also are exciting developments. JetBlue, a low-cost carrier, helps make getting to Alaska more affordable than ever before. Once their flights and pricing were announced, Alaska Airlines followed suit and lowered fares on certain flights (not all of them) to Seattle and Los Angeles. Cost has always been a major hurdle in courting visitors to Alaska, but the inclusion of a low-cost carrier to the mix helps ease that burden.

It’s shaping up to be an exciting summer for the tourism industry in the Mat-Su Valley. Early indications are that hotels are looking great with their occupancy, and several tour companies have said they are looking better than ever with their bookings heading into June.

All of this is good news for those working in the tourism industry, of course, but also for the entire community. Those dollars churn from the tourism business to the grocery store for supplies, to workers for wages, and so on. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

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