Alaska is a top travel destination: everything under the sun, and northern lights.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: VISITOR INDUSTRY

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It's a rare sunny day in Southeast Alaska. The sun glints off towering, snow-capped peaks, with dark forests and misty waterfalls blanketing their lower shoulders. Glaciers dip icy toes in the emerald waters. A brown bear prowls a rocky beach looking for dinner, while far out at sea a pod of orcas leaps through the waves and humpback whales breach, slapping their huge tails as they splash back into the ocean.

It's a scene worthy of a postcard, and it's the one the majority of tourists who visit Alaska each year hope to see.

"Alaska is something very iconic," says Roy Neese with the Anchorage Convention and Visitors Bureau (ACVB). "We're very much on TV and very much in the public eye and public mindset."

For most travelers, Alaska is a once-in-a-lifetime destination.

They're drawn by the wildlife, culture, glaciers, and the scenery. Neese says, "It's kind of the whole Alaska experience of the mountains and the scenery and the bigness of the place."

The majority of tourists see Alaska from the vantage point of an Inside Passage cruise, one third arrive via airline, and a small percentage arrive by ferry or by driving the Alaska Highway. According to the Alaska Resource Development Council, tourism is the second-largest private sector employer in the state.

Alaska's size and geologic diversity create many regional differences in the scenery, wildlife, and activities.

Southeast

In Southeast Alaska, cruise ships dominate the industry, bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to see what is stereotypically thought of as Alaska: mountains, glaciers, and wildlife.

In the port towns, tourists can take a walk along Canal Street in Ketchikan, view totem poles and other Tlingit and Tsimshian cultural sites in Saxman, or take a tram up Mount Roberts or hike to Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau. They can go flightseeing, fishing, or take a helicopter to the top of a glacier for a sled dog ride.

Sitka is a popular stop, although its location outside of the Inside Passage means fewer cruise ships stop there.

About 110,000 cruise passengers were expected to stop in Sitka in summer 2013, according to Tonia Rioux, executive director of the Sitka Convention and Visitors Bureau. That compares with Juneau and Ketchikan, which both see more than 1 million cruise ship visitors annually.

Summer arts camps bring thousands of people to the town from a couple dozen states and five foreign countries. Sitka Fest, which includes a music festival, lasts a full month.

Sitka's draw is its spectacular scenery, the arts and the fishing, Rioux says. "We...