Holiday season is also planning season

This time of year is always exciting – the holidays bring with them excitement, good times and cheer. In Alaska’s tourism industry, it’s also an exciting time, because it means families are beginning to start the planning phases for their summer vacations.

The Mat-Su CVB takes advantage of the planning stages by making sure potential visitors have as much information as possible during this important stage. The 2016 Mat-Su Visitor Guide published in mid-November, and this week, 50,000 guides were mailed to high-potential visitors, as identified by the state of Alaska’s tourism marketing efforts.

These guides will hit the mailboxes of visitors who have responded to the state of Alaska marketing programs that they are highly likely to visit within the next two years. The Mat-Su CVB purchases these leads so the guides get to the most qualified visitors possible, and chooses the mid-December time period so that the guides – and all the information about the many tourism businesses and opportunities in the Valley – are in the visitors hands when they are making their decisions about their Alaska vacation.

This year, four new pages were added to the guide, focusing on where visitors can find out more information, as well as a section dedicated to cruise ship passengers who are adding a pre- or post-cruise land adventure. This audience makes up a sizable percentage of visitors, so providing them appropriate information is vitally important. The Talkeetna and Denali section of this year’s guide was also expanded by a page to offer visitors more information about the upper Susitna Valley and the many tourism-related opportunities that abound in the region.

As much as a printed visitor guide is important to any destination, so is the need to embrace technology and adapt to current trends. Last year, the Mat-Su Visitor Guide was available for download online, so visitors can have a digital copy of the guide no matter where they are located. This year’s guide is already available online, in a page-turning format at alaskavisit.com.

Coming this spring is an entirely redesigned Web site for the Mat-Su CVB, in a responsive design format. This allows all content and information to be scaled to optimal viewing on a desktop computer, tablet or smartphone-sized screen. This is one of the fastest-growing trends in Web design, and will be a benefit for not only our visitors who are in market already, but also members, as their information will be readily available to visitors who are making last-minute planning decisions.

While a majority of the Mat-Su’s tourism season is in the summer, the holiday season is just as important because that’s when plans – and purchases – start to be made. Reaching these visitors during the planning season both online and in print is important to ensuring a successful and profitable summer season, for all sectors of the tourism industry.

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