Alaska winter tourism: the industry that many doubted.

• Author: Miller, Mike
• Position: Cover Story

In the early 1960s Jim Branch must have felt lonely as he traveled the business meetings circuit in and around Anchorage, and eventually in Fairbanks, Juneau and other population centers. Branch had hired on as manager of the newly-opened Alyeska Ski Resort at Girdwood just south of Anchorage, and to many of his listeners the message he carried sounded pretty weird.

One hundred days of summer, said Branch, did not have to comprise the state's entire visitor period. Winter tourism, too, he told audiences, could play a major role in Alaska's economic scheme.

Winter tourists? In Alaska? Even within the Alaska visitor industry the message met with more than a little skepticism. True enough, winter had always been a time of great pleasure for Alaskans. Northern men and women had long enjoyed a love affair with mushing and sprint racing throughout southcentral Alaska, the Interior, and the Arctic. And true as well, the roster of Alaska's wintertime festivals included the likes of the Anchorage Fur Rendezvous, the Fairbanks Winter Carnival, and scads of more localized celebrations. Fun-filled, worthwhile celebrations, all.

And, of course, Alyeska, the ski resort that Branch was managing - with its new state-of-the-art chairlifts and the area's first-rate lodge, restaurant, and service facilities - promised unexcelled winter recreation for southcentral Alaska downhill skiers.

But, the skeptics asked, would any really significant number of visitors come from outside the state to enjoy these attractions? Wouldn't Alaska's winter climate, with its deep-freeze reputation, discourage even winter skiers and other winter enthusiasts from the other states and overseas?

"They'll come," Branch confidently told a Juneau audience of business leaders and curious skiers gathered at the municipal building during an early visit to the state capital. Repeating the mantra he had voiced to chambers of commerce and service club audiences throughout southcentral and interior Alaska, Branch said winter visitors would come to ski and to sightsee, that they would participate in winter celebrations and whoop-it-ups, and that they'd watch sled dog races and photograph Alaska's incredible winter beauty. They might even enjoy seeing the northern lights.

Jim Branch was right. On all counts.

Winter tourism has grown slowly but steadily since those early years. Today it's an important component of the Alaska visitor industry. It does not, and probably never will, rival the summer trade, currently estimated at more than a million visitors each year.

But the McDowell Group of Juneau and the Alaska Division of Tourism counted 29,900 "vacation-and-pleasure" visitors during fall/winter 1995-96, 20,700 "business-and-pleasure" arrivals during the same time period, plus 45,900 travelers coming north to visit friends and relatives during October through April - a total of 96,500.

It's pretty clear that fall and winter tourism even now comprises a significant part of the Alaska visitor industry. (Remember, in 1967 when Alaska celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Alaska Purchase from Russia, the total visitors count for that entire year was estimated at 87,000).

No one really doubts the viability of winter tourism anymore, Tom Garrett, Alaska's director of the Division of Tourism certainly does not. "This is an area of incredible, substantial growth, especially in the recent past," he says, "and I'm forecasting continued substantial growth for a long time to come."

What we have seen recently, says Garrett, is an "increase in momentum" spurred by tour and travel packaging that didn't exist a decade ago. "We had all the components - excellent transportation access, fine hotels and lodges, world-class skiing, sled...