ore than 3 million visitors marked Alaska off their must-see list in 2024, outnumbering the resident population by more than four to one. No one doubts that the state is an attractive and welcoming destination for tourists. Yet the numbers reveal that only an elite sliver of potential tourists overcame Alaska’s remoteness to glimpse its majestic sights.
Take, for example, Wyoming, home of Yellowstone National Park, which drew 8.7 million visitors in 2024, making tourism the Cowboy State’s second-largest industry. Or there’s Vermont, where the state tourism department counted 15.8 million visitors in 2023, or 24 per resident. That’s a lot of leaf peepers! Much as Alaska sees itself as a tourist mecca, clearly the pilgrimage is made only by travelers who really, really want to.
In an increasingly competitive tourism market, how does Alaska’s visitor industry convince travelers to spend their disposable income to brave the distance?
“Some people are like, ‘Why do you really have to do it? Everybody wants to come to Alaska,’” observes Julie Saupe, president and CEO of Visit Anchorage. “Well, most people want to come to Alaska, that’s true; however, they need encouragement. They need information on how to do it. They need to know why they should.”
At the local level, Explore Fairbanks reports a mixed snapshot of visitor trends for the first half of this year. “2025 started off well, and January was a great month for overall visitation,” says Scott McCrea, president and CEO of Explore Fairbanks. “We saw declines in most numbers after that, but as we got into the summer months we saw some positive momentum.” Therefore, McCrea believes the summer season will close out stronger than anticipated.
“What’s encouraging for us in Fairbanks, and for some of our partners that operate year-round, is that those who had softer bookings for the summer are saying the upcoming aurora/winter season is looking very solid,” he adds. “That’s encouraging, especially since our winter visitors tend to stay longer and spend more than the summer visitors do.”
McCrea notes that, while it’s difficult to pinpoint a single reason for the lower spring numbers, international strife and economic uncertainty can cause downstream impacts on visitation. He adds that, surprisingly, last-minute bookings have increased—which is unusual, as Alaska and Fairbanks trips are usually planned well in advance.
“On average, states spend $20 million on tourism initiatives,” says Simpson. “We compete on a global stage, but it is hard to keep up.”
As the state’s industry-funded tourism marketing bureau, ATIA is spending most of its budget targeting the domestic audience, especially high-potential travelers, in multiple ways.
“We look geographically at different cities and states that are able to produce travelers who will spend a lot of time and money in the state,” says Simpson. “Through digital marketing techniques, we also target travelers with a specific interest in certain types of travel, such as activities offered in Alaska. We overlay these two approaches.”
ATIA also follows a public relations strategy that includes working with travel writers to reach a wide audience through different media outlets. ATIA’s Alaska Media Road Show, held every November, connects travel writers and tour suppliers with ATIA members to share story ideas, which Simpson says has been highly effective in generating media coverage.
ATIA also works closely with the travel trade—such as tour operators and travel agents—by attending conferences and trade shows across the country. ATIA also relies on social media to highlight what Alaska has to offer, from glaciers and Alaska Native culture to the northern lights and public lands.
“Historically, we’ve targeted our messages to people in their 50s, but lately we’ve seen our audience and visitation shifting to a younger demographic,” says Simpson. “We drive interest in younger people by using Instagram and TikTok, which is geared to them. Facebook attracts an older audience.”
According to Simpson, ATIA changes its strategy each year based on budget changes and goals. “We look for the highest and best return that will bring the most visitors to Alaska who will leave their dollars with businesses across the state,” she says. “Reaching people through advertising is critical, and it’s very important to create fresh, new content as the official voice of the destination.”
Direct messaging works hand in hand with secondhand referrals. “Public relations and reaching the travel trade are also important, but these are things that are built over the long-term,” Simpson adds. “We continually invest in these channels to bring in visitors that we are not attracting through paid advertising.”
“We try to emphasize our marketing of the summer season to places that offer direct flights to Fairbanks during the summertime,” says McCrea. “For this summer, those markets (in addition to the year-round service from Seattle with both Alaska Airlines and Delta) included Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and Portland [Oregon].”
Like many destination marketing organizations (DMOs), Explore Fairbanks’ primary source of funding comes through bed tax revenues.
“The City of Fairbanks and the Fairbanks North Star Borough allocate portions of their bed tax revenues to us, which altogether accounts for around 92 percent of our budget,” says McCrea. “It’s a great funding model; if you look at who pays the bed tax, it’s being paid from outside the community. By reinvesting the bed tax into marketing the destination, we bring more visitors in, which has a trickle-down effect on the economy.”
Explore Fairbanks uses a variety of strategies, tactics, and media to reach potential travelers. This includes advertising campaigns geared to direct-flight markets; a combination of traditional print advertising, social media, and advertising on streaming platforms such as Hulu; and collateral pieces including the visitors’ guide, winter guide, and website.
“We’re not just marketing to potential visitors but also to other audiences, including the travel trade and meetings and convention planners,” adds McCrea. “Our tourism department helps educate and train those in the travel trade about what Fairbanks has to offer—through business-to-business conferences, familiarization tours, online trainings, and trade shows—and our meetings and conventions sales manager attends statewide and national meetings to persuade conventions to visit.”
The DMO also works with travel media to encourage them to come to Fairbanks to see what it has to offer. “Fairbanks is a destination with countless stories, and we’ve had great success in getting high-profile pieces in high-profile publications,” says McCrea.
“One of our greatest successes has been the growth we’ve seen in the winter/aurora market,” McCrea says. “We strategically marketed ourselves as a world-class aurora destination, and it has paid off. We were competing with entire countries like Iceland and Norway, and though we are obviously more limited in budget, on almost every travel publication list out there, we constantly rank high in the list of best destinations in the world to see the northern lights.”
Off-peak tourism grew so much during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to David Kasser, senior vice president of sales at Visit Anchorage, that it surpassed the traditional season. Kasser says, “Now we have actually more visitors in the eight months starting October 1 through April coming to Anchorage—going out to see the aurora and having all those experiences—than we do in the summer. Pretty amazing, right?”
Explore Fairbanks also has a Visitor Engagement Department at the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center, which is the main visitor center for the city. “They help visitors plan their time here when they arrive as well as take phone calls and emails throughout the year,” says McCrea. “Even with the number of resources that people have available to help them plan a trip, they still view DMOs as one of the most trusted sources about a destination.”
“COVID really turned off international visitation, and it’s taking a long time to build back up,” says Simpson. “I don’t know when or if that will change, but as global travel continues to grow, we are certainly an attractive destination.”
ATIA currently targets the German-speaking European market because of seasonal nonstop flights from Frankfurt by Condor Airlines and Discover Airlines. “These travelers tend to come to Alaska for a long period of time and to visit many communities,” says Simpson.
Explore Fairbanks also heavily targets German-speaking Europe, which continues to be a strong market for the DMO. “We’ve had our own contractor over there for almost twenty years, which has been beneficial for helping us be successful in that market,” McCrea says. According to McCrea, prior to 2020, Explore Fairbanks’ core international markets for its winter/aurora tourism included Japan and China, with Japan at one time offering direct charter flights to the Interior. Over the past two years, the DMO has instead focused on the India market. ATIA is likewise looking to South Asia. Simpson says, “We’ve also spent the past few years working in the India market, which is a growing market for Alaska and for the United States in general.”
To validate that Visit Anchorage is putting its marketing money in the right place, the bureau relies on continuous research. In the past year, a new approach has been a WiFi survey at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. “If you try to log on the free WiFi at the airport, maybe you’ve been asked, ‘Do you want to take a survey?’ We weed out residents pretty quickly, so you probably haven’t seen the full survey,” Saupe says. “We used to try to do man-on-the-street surveys, intercept studies, which is very expensive, so we’re pleased that this seems to be proving itself.” The result is a handful of “personas” representing the model audience most likely to be receptive to travel marketing.
Explore Fairbanks
“Tourism is inspiring, and travel is the ultimate citizen diplomacy,” says Simpson. “Tourism is comprised of a lot of small businesses that love where they live and want to show it off to other people while making a living and providing jobs.”
ATIA’s marketing helps show off the state’s virtues. “Everybody wants an authentic experience, and Alaska is the perfect place to become immersed and to slow down,” Simpson says. “Our biggest challenge is to make sure we stay top-of-mind to potential travelers around the world, and to remain a destination they want to visit. That takes consistent tourism marketing.”
“It’s human nature to want to travel, and for people looking for wide-open spaces and opportunities to experience Mother Nature, that’s Alaska and Fairbanks,” adds McCrea. “That’s what our state is all about.”
He notes that tourism creates approximately 7,200 jobs in the Fairbanks North Star Borough, from lodging and hospitality-focused companies to dog mushers, tour guides, and more.
“Tourism not only provides an economic benefit but contributes to quality of life,” says McCrea. “There are a lot of things that Fairbanks residents enjoy—such as air service, restaurants, local attractions, and events—because we have a robust, year-round tourism industry.”
McCrea believes that Fairbanks—and Alaska—will continue to attract travelers from around the world as long as word continues to spread.
“We have such an amazing product here for people to experience; it’s a bucket-list item,” he says. “For that future to be successful, however, entities like ATIA and the state’s DMOs need to have the resources to market the state and our destinations successfully. This doesn’t just happen organically; our role is now more important than ever.”