A hitch in their git-along! (From the Publisher).

• Author: McCorkle, Vern C.
• Position: Preparation for tourist season - Brief Article - Column

Reports are admittedly preliminary, but positive, as professionals survey the coming visitor trade and tourism season in Alaska. It seems that earlier fears have not been completely realized, and thank goodness for that. As the old saw goes, 'it's an ill wind that blows no good,' and so it is with the segment of business concerned with tourism. The ill wind of terrorism is blowing tourists our way. People are feeling safer when they think about Alaska as a vacation destination and convention venue. But there's been a hitch.

People are making travel decisions a few months later than they normally would have made them. This so-called 'hitch in their (decision to) git-along' (to Alaska) has had the visitor industry hanging from tenter hooks, in a state of desperate anxiety since 9/11.

It appears that in every segment of the industry, except for one, the highway business enterprises, reservations are beginning to roll in at a steady clip, in just the past few weeks. Although figures for June are not yet tallied, when they are, in the next few days, it is hoped that a definite turn-around will be taking place. Airlines are putting on additional flights. Cruise lines are booked solid. The prospects of gasoline prices at least no higher than last year, is prompting retirees and families to hit the road on their long-hoped-for trip to the fabled land of the Midnight Sun. (Let's keep that mystique working for us.)

Highway businesses are the last to feel impacts of a visitor influx. Border crossings in May...