Partnerships key element to help market Alaska

Here’s a news flash — Alaska is big. Very big. But in terms of marketing Alaska to visitors, the community is small and tight-knit, which benefits the tourism industry as a whole.

Many Outside destinations are extremely competitive in marketing, often fighting for a share of the visitor dollars to their areas. While Alaska destinations always want visitors to stay longer in their specific areas, there is a true partnership between destination marketing organizations that often isn’t the case elsewhere.

That’s because we recognize that when people choose Alaska as a vacation destination, they intend to visit the entire state. Unlike the visitor who goes to Seattle and forgoes the rest of the state of Washington, for example, a visitor to Alaska typically spends time in all areas of the state.

These partnerships are mutually beneficial, both for the destinations themselves and for business owners. Visit Anchorage, the organization that used to be known as the Anchorage Convention and Visitors Bureau, markets the entire Southcentral area, including the Mat-Su Valley, and we benefit from that. Fairbanks Convention and Visitors Bureau markets Denali, which in turn helps the Mat-Su region gain exposure. While we’d love for visitors to stay in the Mat-Su exclusively, we are realistic and know they are going to spend time in Anchorage, the Mat-Su, Denali, Fairbanks and so on. Having strong marketing organizations in those areas is important to the overall success of marketing the Mat-Su Valley as a result.

Partnerships also make marketing the Mat-Su Valley more cost-effective. With a limited budget, the Mat-Su CVB couldn’t begin to market the area nationally on our own. But through a strong partnership with the Alaska Travel Industry Association, we can cooperatively market at a much more friendly cost to the bottom line.

We’ve attended national consumer shows in the Alaska booth, talking to visitors about the Mat-Su Valley, at a fraction of the cost to have our own booth.

By defraying the cost of marketing through partnerships, we can spread our message to a much larger audience and ultimately reach more people making their vacation decisions.

By working together to cooperatively market the state of Alaska, destination marketing organizations enjoy a greater success.

Once we get visitors excited about coming to Alaska — whether it is through something they saw from the Mat-Su CVB, Visit Anchorage or the Alaska Travel Industry Association — we all share in those tourism dollars through filled beds, served meals, booked tours, local taxes and more.

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