A growing diversification.

• Author: Forker, Jennifer
• Position: Alaskan Native corporations' entry into the tourist trade

Regional and village Native corporations are moving more and more into tourism these days. They see it as Alaska's only reliable growth industry.

Spurred by the knowledge that asset diversification holds the key to a remunerative future, nearly all of Alaska's Native corporations are edging into the one major industry with a certain future: tourism.

While still trailing oil as Alaska's largest industry, tourism has a lucrative card up its sleeve that the others lack: Alaska, with the allure of all that embodies the Last Frontier, will never want for tourists. With the increase in winter tourism (see "Alaska Winter Tourism," Alaska Business Monthly, February 1997,), that point comes crashing home. "(Tourism) is really the only industry that has grown steadily since, let's say, statehood, when people started keeping track of these things," says University of Alaska Anchorage economist Steve Colt.

By contrast, every year brings less oil to pump, fewer trees to cut and lower fish prices.

"There's not much left to be a growing industry," Colt notes. "By a process of elimination, tourism is growing the fastest" in both dollars and employment numbers.

Although fast isn't exactly the word for it. The McDowell Group, a Juneau-based economic-consulting firm hired by the state to keep track of its tourism numbers, reports that the nearly 1 million tourists who visited the state last summer amounted to a 3 percent increase over the summer of 1995-akin to the growth of the gross national product. Another 208,000 visitors came to Alaska during fall 1995 and winter 1996.

Although tourism isn't growing by leaps and bounds, it's at least moving ahead, and the Native corporations are jumping on board.

"Most of them are pretty excited about what they're doing" in tourism, says Colt, who studies the Native corporations' financial performance for the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER).

Long-time Players

For some, the tourism industry is nothing new. NANA Regional Corp. Inc. always has had a stake in housing and feeding Alaska visitors. A joint venture with the Marriott Corp. that provides housekeeping, food services and facility maintenance in Anchorage and at remote sites such as the North Slope is one of NANA's most profitable enterprises. The Native corporation also operates bus tours and hotels in Kotzebue and Deadhorse.

In the past, NANA invested in the visitor field - even in money-losing businesses - because it provided much-needed jobs for shareholders, one of NANA's driving goals then and today. But now the Native corporation looks at the return on its investments and aims for higher yields.

NANA has a number of new tourism ventures in the works that it hopes will draw visitors to the northwest comer of the state. Tour Arctic, which operates bus tours in Kotzebue and Deadhorse, drew 10,000 visitors to the NANA region in 1993. NANA has another hook: Kiana, about 60 miles northeast of Kotzebue. Slowly, Tour Arctic has drawn Outsiders to this village. Thirty visitors came three years ago; 120 arrived last summer.

The one-day Kiana excursion, primarily marketed to...