TOURISM

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Stocking Up on Sta

Finding employees to sell the Alaska experience

By Isaac Stone Simonelli

Last year was a record sales year for Forests, Tides & Treasures, a general store in Seward. With strong sales continuing through the o -season, co-owners Cli Krug and Linda Chichester project a double-digit increase in sales in 2022.

“We survived the pandemic despite the big cut in hours because we were able to maintain an elastic business model and adapt to the challenges before us,” Krug says. “We continuously adapted our merchandise selection to refl ect what the visitors who came to Seward wanted.”

That merchandise ranges from underwear and sleeping bags to jams, soaps, candles, jewelry, and art prints. Krug and Chichester say they were surprised at how well the business managed to do despite cutting back on the number of hours they were open.

“Locals and our guests adapted to our hours seamlessly, and we were still able to be profi table in the end,” Chichester says.

Krug adds, “We were also able to overcome many of the logistical challenges in our industry by bringing in merchandise as soon as we could… For the 2022 season, we started taking

inventory in as early as November of 2021.”

Krug describes the shop as a gateway to Alaska, providing not just sundries needed for an Alaska adventure but also a wide range of Alaska art, artisanal products, and other unique items.

“We fill our store with Alaskan artists, artisans, and vendors,” Krug says, “with the specific goal of connecting all of our guests with each and every one of them. They are able to experience what is best about Alaska first-hand in our store.”

Another big lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic is the importance of a healthy work-life balance. The reduction of store hours significantly improved that balance, Chichester says.

“We had to cut our store hours back because we didn’t have the personnel,” Chichester says. Last year, the team not only trimmed hours by three hours a day but also closed its doors two days a week.

Chichester says, “The reduction in hours significantly improved our experience of the crazy Alaskan summers and showed us the

In addition to core sta , Seward’s Forests, Tides & Treasures fills the turnover of seasonal positions mainly by hiring through CoolWorks.com, which is aimed at job-seekers who crave adventure.

Lena Lee Another Crazy Summer

Kat Sorensen, the director of the Seward Chamber of Commerce, explains that Seward is particularly well positioned in the state to be able to cater to both cruise ship passengers and independent travelers.

“We are on the road and rail system, so we do get to see our fair share of independent travelers, but we also look forward to ship days and the business that they bring to town,” Sorensen says. “We are really excited as a community for this upcoming tourism season.”

By May, many tour operators and hotels in Seward were already seeing high levels of preseason bookings, Sorensen notes.

“We are lucky to live in an industry where we can kind of see and predetermine what the season will look like based on the number of bookings,” she says.

About forty-one ships that are members of the Cruise Lines International Association are scheduled to visit Alaska, which works out to about 630 voyages.

“We estimate that’s about 1.5 million passengers for the summer,” says Alaska Travel Industry Association (ATIA) President and CEO Sarah Leonard, assuming each ship is at full capacity.

The city of Ketchikan’s port and harbors department expects ships to be operating at about 70 percent capacity, which would mean just over 1 million cruise ship passengers arriving in 2022. That would fall short of the record season of 1.3 million cruise visitors in 2019 but far more than the 115,000 passengers who arrived in 2021.

Adventure Days

The turnaround from 2021 is fueling optimism, yet challenges remain for 2022. One of the greatest of these is attracting employees to service tourism businesses.

“One big hurdle that we're facing is a worker shortage. That was definitely the biggest issue last year, and coming into this year, it's still an issue,” Sorensen says. “We live in a unique and distant

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land, so it's not always the easiest to get workers up here.”

Attracting summer labor to Alaska has always been difficult, but travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic have compounded the issue. Immigration policies during the pandemic drastically reduced the J-1 Summer Work Travel cultural exchange program. This program historically issued nearly 2,000 visas annually for summer travel workers in Alaska. In 2020, that number dropped to 22, recovering only modestly in 2021 to 297. Traditionally, these employees have filled the ranks in restaurants, hotels, and other tourism businesses.

“Even before the pandemic there weren’t the numbers in the workforce to fi ll all the seasonal jobs, especially during the busy summer season,” Leonard says. “So many of our businesses have relied on J-1 visas.”

Leonard says ATIA is urging the federal government to process the backlog of J-1 visas and relieve the program restrictions.

“We're advocating for Congress to release the cap on those visas so that businesses that are involved in those programs are able to hire, whether it's someone from Ukraine or just from another country, to fi ll some of those jobs,” Leonard says. She notes that ATIA has been exploring ways to o er job opportunities specifi cally to Ukrainian citizens fl eeing the war in their home country.

In Seward, Krug and Chichester have been forced to think long and hard about what changes they needed to make to attract and keep employees at Forests, Tides & Treasures.

“It was a matter of fi guring out what is meaningful to our sta ,” Krug says. “With the Great Resignation, that really came front and center.”

Krug and Chichester looked at the wages they were o ering, the employee perks they could make available, and the type of work/life balance they could create to allow seasonal employees to fully engage with the wonders of Southcentral.

“With the challenges that we had last year, we really spent a lot of time trying to learn from our employees, talking with local business owners, and utilizing the information and data available at the state and national level to find out how we could do a better job,” Krug says. “We just

“One big hurdle that we're facing is a worker shortage. That was definitely the biggest issue last year, and coming into this year, it's still an issue… We live in a unique and distant land, so it's not always the easiest to get workers up here.”

Kat Sorensen Director Seward Chamber of Commerce kept adjusting our hire and benefits package to reflect the feedback that we were getting.”

One of the most meaningful benefits is offering staff adventure days. Every month, they shut down the store and take their employees out to experience an adventure available in Seward, from sea kayaking and whale watching to dog sledding and ziplining.

“And the added benefit of providing these opportunities to our sta allows them to promote Alaska and other tourism businesses, as it gives them adventurous stories to share with customers,” Chichester notes.

Cli Krug and Linda Chichester posted their biggest sales year ever in 2021, relying on independent travelers and locals shopping at Forests, Tides & Treasures.

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Ready Together

To help tourism businesses stay on top of the evolving challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated best practices, ATIA launched its Ready Together campaign.

“We had many businesses work with us on industry protocols and operating in a more resilient way through our Ready Together campaign,” Leonard says.

Even with merchandise arriving in time, the supply chain of enthusiastic and knowledgeable employees is an uphill battle. A big part of that is finding somewhere for them to stay.

“We also live in a small community that doesn't necessarily have the housing infrastructure to support the workers if they are here,” explains Sorensen. “A lot of people have been renting out places year-round so that they can house workers there in the summer.”

This is exactly what Krug and Chichester are doing.

“I don't know anybody who's not struggling with employee housing,” Krug says. “We are renting two threebedroom apartments year-round to meet this challenge.”

Forests, Tides & Treasures currently has twelve employees, though the company is looking to hire three to four more. Krug and Chichester have had the most success hiring through the CoolWorks.com portal.

“It's geared more towards unique places full of adventure,” Chichester says. “It has been a great place to find quality people year-round. In fact, we have never stopped trying to hire since the pandemic started. We found many of our current staff at the end of last summer and fall. We have been very lucky.”

While CoolWorks advertises outdoor adventure jobs nationwide, ATIA created a jobs portal specifically for Alaska with jobs that range from seasonal positions to year-round work.

While looking to continue to grow their team, Krug and Chichester say they are laser focused on nurturing and developing the team they have, which will dictate how many hours they stay open. They made it clear they didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize the balance they found during the pandemic.

Krug says, “In the end, everybody does better: the team does better, the business does better. Even the dog and cats do better.”