Investing in visitors.

• Author: Woodring, Jeannie
• Position: Alaska's tourism industry

Compared to Alaska's other industries, tourism is largely a renewable resource, and paying for its promotion makes dollars - and sense. The big question is: Who should pay for tourism marketing - the state or the visitor industry?

Each year, despite earthquakes, volcanoes, oil spills, threatened tourism boycotts and jittery recessions, Alaska tourism continues to grow by 4 percent to 8 percent.

As over 1 million visitors annually trek into the state, they spend more than $700 million on in-state direct purchases like travel, lodging and food and spur the creation of more than 25,000 full- and part-time jobs, according to figures reported by the Alaska Division of Tourism.

Circulating through the local economy, these tourism dollars continue to multiply in value and affect all areas of the economy.

Aside from pumping millions into the economy each year, tourism has other advantages. First, tourism brings long-term results. Visitors to Alaska rarely forget their trips north. If they don't return to Alaska themselves, they tell friends about the state. As David Reaume, a Juneau economist, notes, "One of the benefits from tourism that I don't think enough of its critics weigh in their criticism is the publicity to Alaska from tourists that come here. Most people who leave here say, 'I would come back here.'"

Another advantage that makes tourism an attractive industry for Alaska is that it is largely sustainable, less likely to deplete the state's natural resources than any other industry.

"Tourism doesn't dig a hole, cut a tree or anything," says Brad Phillips, president and co-owner of Phillips Tours and Cruises and chairman of the Alaska Tourism Marketing Council (ATMC). "We sell the same product day after day, year after year, and no one takes it home but on film."

While the value of tourism to Alaska and the need to promote state tourism is well recognized, the question of who funds Alaska's tourism promotion has stimulated debate. On one side, the visitor industry wants the state to ante up more bucks for the job. Opponents, on the other hand, call for the visitor industry to pay more for tourism marketing.

Aside from what individual Alaska tourism companies spend on their own advertising, funding for statewide tourism promotion goes through ATMC, which is a joint venture of the Alaska Visitors Association (AVA) and the Alaska Department of Commerce and Economic Development, which runs the Division of Tourism. Promotional funding for ATMC...