TOURISM

The COVID-19 Shuffle

Small tourism finds big solutions

By Tracy Barbour

For more than two decades, Alaskan Tour Guides has offered multi-day trips in Alaska. In a typical year, the Wasilla-based business takes hundreds of guests on excursions, ranging from exciting sled dog kennel tours and wildlife viewing to sightseeing in breathtaking national and state parks. The company also customizes trips for families and other groups that want to create a unique travel adventure. “Primarily, our travel is along the road system between Homer and Fairbanks,” Owner Doreen Toller says. “We put together the whole vacation for folks, including lodging, transportation, tours, and meals.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year, it completely disrupted everything for Alaskan Tour Guides. The company was 75 percent booked at the time—then it was forced to cancel all tours. COVID-19 created too many uncertainties about which businesses would be in operation and how they were going to operate. And Toller wanted to make sure customers received the best possible service.

As a creative solution, Alaskan Tour Guides allowed customers to carry over their tours and receive discounts on some activities. “We charged a small cancel fee, and we allowed customers to use that fee as a credit when they rebooked,” says Toller, who is proud of her company’s frequent 5-star Tripadvisor reviews. “We basically did everything we could for the customer because of the unknowns with COVID.”

The company’s strategy for this year is to not only sell tours but to also sell travelers on the idea that Alaskan Tour Guides is on top of the protocols for keeping them safe. Toller explains: “We bought the UV light wands and additional sanitizers. We are requiring our travelers to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test within 72 hours of arriving. That’s for the comfort of travelers, who are loving that. We are trying to let people know we’re operating in a safe manner.”

Industry Experts Watch Businesses Evolve

Alaskan Tour Guides’ response to the pandemic is consistent with what’s been happening with many other tourism-related, small businesses in the state. The COVID-19 crisis has kept Alaska's traditional visitor dollars literal oceans

away, causing small businesses that typically rely on that money to find creative ways to keep their doors open— all while implementing optimal safety procedures and modifying how they cater to local and online customers.

As a result, Alaska’s travel and tour industry experts have seen businesses evolve in interesting ways. Early last year when necessary travel restrictions went into place, everyone from tour directors to fishing guides to bed and breakfast owners were forced to react in crisis mode, according to Sarah Leonard, president and CEO of the Alaska Travel Industry Association (ATIA). Companies had to make quick decisions on issues like rebooking policies, staffing, and how to continue to pay bills with no cash coming in. “As we started to see limited opening capacity for food-service type businesses, the tour operator sector was still challenged by finding cash and support with no visitors and revenue coming through the doors,” Leonard says. “Even today, tourism business owners continue to try to navigate complex federal funding programs while adapting their business operations to COVID-19 safety and health protocols in order to protect their teams and guests.”

Juneau Food Tours, for example, revamped its in-person food tour to provide Alaska gift boxes for online purchase. Salmonberry Tours in Anchorage used its shuttles to provide deliveries for people as they began to order groceries and plants early in the pandemic. And Stan Stephens Glacier and Wildlife Cruises in Valdez focused on making boat improvements last summer when the business normally would have been welcoming sightseeing and wildlife viewing guests.

Alaska’s travel associations shifted a large portion of their marketing resources to in-state campaigns encouraging residents to support their state by visiting places "in their own backyard."

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ATIA and other destination marketing organizations in the state have also had to be resourceful in their pandemic response. From the beginning, Leonard says, ATIA’s small teams of employees worked tirelessly to gather and share the sometimes-overwhelming information coming at its industry— whether it was ever-changing health and travel mandates or the various and complicated funding applications and processes. “We heard daily from our tourism friends and association business members the struggles they were facing about how to keep their employees paid and businesses afloat while at the same time trying to keep ATIA’s doors open,” she says.

As the leading statewide membership association and voice for Alaska’s travel and tourism industry, ATIA developed high level COVID-19 safety protocols for tourism businesses based on government guidelines and best practices. It also hosted complimentary virtual webinars, providing information on funding and safety topics, and advocated at the state and federal levels for continued support for tourism across Alaska.

“As businesses did begin to open, ATIA shifted its limited marketing resources last summer and focused on an in-state campaign encouraging Alaska residents to support their neighbors and communities by visiting places ‘in their own backyard’—perhaps places they had never been to in Alaska before. ATIA’s instate campaign, called Show Up for Alaska, will be renewed this summer, too,” Leonard says.

Casey Ressler, marketing and communications manager at the MatSu Convention & Visitors Bureau, has also seen small businesses in his area evolving to survive. “Restaurants in the past that never thought of doing takeout have done 100 percent take-out,” Ressler says. “And we have some of the hotels with completely touchless check in.”

As a new twist, some bureau members partnered together to form the Alaska Experience Company, which offers a collection of different adventures. The tours give families and other small groups convenient access to popular tour packages. “I think it illustrated that people want an option to book one thing and have everything included,” he says.

During the pandemic, the Mat-Su Convention & Visitors Bureau has also undergone its own transition. The bureau’s four full-time employees were able to pivot on the fly and become more proactive. “One thing that was important to us was that we become a community asset, a resource for our members,” Ressler says. “We made more than 1,500 calls last year to our members, pointing them in the direction of grant applications and telling them how to safely reopen. Having that constant communication every day was super important to members.”

The bureau also offered webinars that gave its members access to national experts on the federal relief bills and leading marketing experts with tips to help them move forward. “We went from 100 percent, ‘let’s market, market, market’ to being a resource,” Ressler says. “I’m proud of how we were able to meet that challenge.”

The Mat-Su Convention & Visitors Bureau is now enhancing its advertising to target Alaskans. Instate marketing and tourism has been critical for the survival of a significant number of small businesses. “There is no question that Alaskans kept some of our small businesses open last summer,” Ressler says. “It was a little scary last year with tourism last summer. The importance of Alaskans was something that maybe we didn’t fully understand—maybe because we were focused on outside businesses.”

The bureau is also intensifying its marketing efforts to woo independent travelers from outside Alaska through publications like AARP The Magazine. “All of us are identifying those travelers

Instate marketing and tourism has been critical for the survival of a significant number of Alaska’s small businesses.

Tom Bol | Mat-Su CVB

Proactive Stance Helps Mitigate COVID-19’s Impact

In Kodiak, small businesses have also been creative, flexible, and proactive in their efforts to ride out the pandemic. Ultimately, this stance has benefited the community, according to Discover Kodiak Executive Director Aimee Williams. “Tourism was given an advance notice of the pandemic before it actually impacted that particular business sector,” she explains. “Decisions had to be made about whether or not to purchase insurance, make additional investments, and even to operate during 2020 or not. Several of the wilderness lodges around Kodiak Island did not see a way to make money in the 2020 season, so they opted to not open. Although this was a very hard decision, it was determined that they would lose less if they stayed closed until 2021.”

In fact, Williams says, the City of Kodiak was at the forefront of realizing that its small businesses were going to need assistance to be able to survive the 2020 season. So the city used a generous portion of its Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding to set up a needsbased grant program to transfer money to businesses quickly. Kodiak formed a new nonprofit, the Kodiak Economic Development Corporation (KEDC), and used that entity to evaluate applications and set grant amounts. KEDC is actually housed at Discover Kodiak’s location. “As the executive director of Discover Kodiak, I knew that we wouldn’t be doing much of our normal tourism-focused work, so we volunteered to be the face of the grant program,” Williams says. “We completed two rounds of grants spread out over a few months and distributed grant

Small businesses like those lining the streets of Skagway have also been creative, flexible, and proactive in their efforts to ride out the pandemic.

Frank Flavin | Skagway Convention & Visitors Bureau

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money to 339 different small businesses. With an additional $500,000 of CARES Act funding being contributed by the Kodiak Island Borough, KEDC helped disperse over $3.5 million to help our businesses weather the COVID storm.”

Kodiak’s enterprises displayed their ingenuity in various ways. For instance, the Islander Bookshop joined forces with a community of independent bookstores. They used an online platform for customers to be able to order books, have them delivered by mail, and they still received a part of the profit. “This allowed the shop to be able to rethink their business plan and begin the lengthy process of creating their own online store,” Williams says.

The Kodiak Island Brewing Co. added a beer garden to allow for social distancing. Ardingers Fine Furniture initiated Facebook live tours through its store to inform customers about new inventory and subsequently took phone orders and offered curbside pickup. And BearTown Market, a group of local artists that set up an art market for when cruise ship passengers are in town, found a unique way to adapt to the local impact of COVID-19. “Due to low tourism numbers, they created a subscription box so that local artists could maintain a portion of their incomes,” Williams says. “Since its inception, the subscription box has been popular, and Kodiak-created goods and art are being shipped all over the United States.”

Skagway, like many other places in Alaska, has a high concentration of tourism businesses and a strong reliance on cruise ship visitors. And for more than a year now, the community has been deeply impacted by restrictions on cruise ship travel and the Canadian/ US border closing to non-essential travel. “Our highway access is through Canada, so people can’t drive where we are located,” explains Cody Jennings, tourism director of the Municipality of Skagway Visitor Department. “And passengers aren’t arriving by cruise ships, so businesses didn’t really have the opportunity to be creative.”

Still, some year-round businesses in the community of 1,000 residents tried to be as resourceful as possible. Some restaurants and retailers began offering curbside pickup and delivery. Businesses like Skagway Brewing Company and Grizzly's General & Skagway Radio Shack really stepped up to serve the community, Jennings says. “We’ve done whatever we can,” she says.

Due to the pandemic, Skagway lost about 90 percent of its economy in one year, according to Jennings. To shore up the community, the municipality used a unique tactic to dispense its CARES Act funding. It distributed monthly checks—$1,000 per person—with the stipulation that recipients spend the money locally. “Our community leaders were very thoughtful about how to make that CARES Act money work for the community and residents,” she says. “It kept our businesses and families afloat.”

Jennings adds: “We haven’t seen the end of this. We have to go another whole year without a cruise ship— unless the CDC does something with their Conditional Sailing Order and the Canadian border opens.”

In the meantime, Skagway is eager to stimulate local events to support the community. Consequently, the city is pursuing partnership and regional advertising opportunities with the Alaska Marine Highway System, airlines, water taxis, and other entities. And even though it has high vaccination rates and relatively few COVID-19 cases, the city is also working on a Safe Skagway Pledge. “We will invite all local businesses to participate by following CDC sanitation guidelines so that our visitors know we are taking this seriously and they can come and enjoy Alaska,” she says.

Visitors enjoy magnificent views from a bluff overlooking the Matanuska Glacier. CARES Act Funding: A Lifeline for Businesses

Federal CARES Act funding has been instrumental in helping many small businesses keep their doors open in Alaska. At Bear Trail Lodge in King Salmon, Co-owner Nanci Morris Lyon was in dire need of money to maintain her staff. She landed a $98,600 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan and used all of it to pay staff members, some of whom have worked at the lodge for twenty-five years. “For a small company like mine, you have got to take care of your employees,” she says. “Our employees are very valuable to the company.”

Morris Lyon kept employees engaged in a wide assortment of projects from sprucing up the lodge’s six cabins and two rooms to freshening up and expanding the guide barn. She says: “It certainly costs me more out [of] my pocket, but I had people who needed to work. It was in some ways lots of busy work, but in other ways that will save us time in the future.”

Adjusting to COVID-19 conditions was a major challenge for Morris Lyon, who has operated the lodge since 1985 and owned it since 2009. The adjustments included disinfecting common areas more stringently; spraying waders with bleach after each wearing; and installing expensive

air purifiers in the lodge and all guest rooms. “It was an incredibly stressful year, and I would wish never to have to do it again,” Morris Lyon says.

In addition, Bear Trail Lodge, which normally hosts up to eighteen people per week, expanded its services beyond taking guests on fishing trips. It also began offering bear viewing trips and renting rooms to Alaska Airlines employees. “We had to get creative to help us all survive,” Morris Lyon says.

Morris Lyon is grateful to Alaskans for their patronage, which helped keep the lodge in business last year. “They kept us alive,” she says. “Without them we would not have been able to make it through the season.”

Alaskan Tour Guides also relied on PPP loan proceeds to pay its employees, which range from three to twelve during peak season. The company received two PPP loans—for $49,000 and $79,000—which it put to good use. Alaskan Tour Guides did whatever it could to keep its office open and staff working during the pandemic. It purchased extra laptops, so staff could work from home, and had some of its seasonal drivers help out in the office. But with no revenue coming in from tours, the company took a major hit.

“Last year was the first time in our history of being in business that we didn’t turn a profit; we had about a $150,000 loss,” Toller says.

But since she and her husband, Bob, are prudent business owners, they have been able to weather the storm, Toller says. She adds: “While we did have a large financial loss in 2020, we are on track to having a once again profitable 2021—fingers crossed.”

So far, so good. Trips are selling out quickly, and Toller is excited about the upcoming season. “We usually have about 600 guests with us annually from June to September, and we already have 450 on the books as of April 7. I don’t have very many seats left on these trips, so that’s promising.”