Big Wild playground: more than a million visitors travel to the great land each year.

• Author: Stricker, Julie

Ever thought about visiting Alaska's Playground? How about stopping by Alaska's Emerald Isle or Alaska's Peak Experience or seeing what Winter Fun/Midnight Sun is all about? Maybe you just want to get a Big Wild Life.

You're not alone. In 2006, 1.63 million people visited Alaska, according to the Alaska Visitor Statistics Program, and almost all of them visited the Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak, Juneau, Fairbanks or Anchorage.

"People want to see mountains, glaciers and wildlife, not necessarily in that order," says Dave Worrell, communications director for the Alaska Travel Industry Association. "It is that pristine wilderness where you can see untrammeled mountains and experience seeing wildlife in their native habitat, glaciers, glaciers calving.... Year after year, survey after survey, that's what people tell us they want for their Alaska experience."

With so much to see and so little time, most visitors opt for a weeklong visit, most aboard a cruise ship. According to Worrell, Americans tend to take the shortest vacations in the industrialized nations. "A seven-day cruise is a very efficient way to see Alaska," he says.

But, if they're on a cruise ship, visitors aren't spending much money in Alaska's cities. The goal of convention and visitors centers and some chambers of commerce around the state is to lure those visitors, as well as independent travelers, to their towns by emphasizing their unique assets.

Depending on their staffing and budgets, Alaska CVBs use a combination of print and electronic media to get the word out, with increasing emphasis on interactive capabilities of the Internet. They also work with cruise and bus lines and try to coordinate with travel writers and other media outlets to showcase their areas. Other venues include trade shows in Alaska and on the West Coast.

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ATIA, with a $10 million annual budget, markets Alaska as a whole by publishing the official state of Alaska vacation planner. It also operates www.travelaska.com.

JUNEAU ROCKS

Juneau, the capital city, is the top visitor destination in the state, according to the state survey, with about 63 percent of total visitors. The lure is its beauty.

"The combination of water, mountains, rainforest, whales and glaciers in such close proximity is hard to find anywhere else," Lorene Palmer, president of the Juneau CVB, wrote. "The scenic beauty is always the top reason cited by visitors."

Palmer says more than 1 million people will visit Juneau...