Valley benefits from a healthy cruise industry

While the nearest cruise ship port used with regularity is hundreds of miles away from the Mat-Su Valley, the impact the cruise industry has on this area is noteworthy.

In terms of real “heads-in-beds” analysis, you can quantify the cruise industry’s importance in the Valley by looking at the 150,000 cruisers who annually leave the ship and add a land package to their vacations. Many of these visitors come through the Valley and stay at lodges in Talkeetna and Denali State Park. While in the Valley, they spend money on lodging, food and activities such as flightseeing, fishing and other sightseeing tours.

“Disappearing cruisers” is a term used for cruisers who get off the ship but don’t buy into an organized package offered by one of the many receptive operators in Alaska. Instead, they do their land tours on their own. These visitors help fill local bed and breakfasts, inns and hotels as well, making them just as important to the economy as packaged land-based tours.

The cruise industry’s impact goes far beyond just bringing people to Valley businesses, however. The effort the industry puts into marketing alone makes it important to Valley businesses that may not immediately think they benefit from the cruise industry.

A perfect example of how a local business benefits from the cruise industry is Lifetime Adventures, owned by Dan McDonough. At a recent Mat-Su CVB luncheon, he said that as a small business, he doesn’t have a large advertising and marketing budget. The cruise industry, however, sinks millions of dollars into marketing and advertising Alaska, which generates excitement, and not just among cruisers.

“Through their marketing, people get interested in coming to Alaska, and once they get here, that helps my business,” McDonough told the audience. “The cruise industry has the budget and the reach that none of us could ever dream of having. That’s why it’s important to my business, even though I don’t have a lot of cruise visitors.”

Another important statistic for tourism businesses located away from the traditional ports of call is 25 percent — the number of cruise ship passengers who return to Alaska on their own to experience the state beyond a cruise.

“Often, these visitors fall in love with Alaska while on their cruise and it makes them want to come back and visit the state on their own,” said Bonnie Quill, executive director of the Mat-Su CVB. “This segment of visitors is extremely important to the Mat-Su Valley because they get out and explore Southcentral Alaska and visit places they may not have seen as part of their cruise.

“But without that initial cruise experience, they probably wouldn’t plan that second trip to Alaska,” Quill said.

With ship redeployments and itinerary changes, there will be fewer cruise visitors in 2010 and 2011, which hurts small family run businesses in the present. In the future, it will impact them even more as cruise companies shrink their Alaska marketing budgets.

In the Valley, even though you can’t see the ship, you can still see the bigger picture. A rising tide lifts all ships — and in the cruise industry’s impact, local businesses.

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