Haines Alaska News: Viewpoints
July 19, 2011, Saturday
Mr. John Binkley’s, (President of Alaska Cruise Lines Inc.) presentation at Chamber luncheon said although the cruise ship industry will not increase in number of ships visiting Haines we can expect an 8.7% increase in visitors”. (Ships are getting larger). Our Borough spending $20,000 on another study will not increase the number of ship visits!
Why? Other communities and nations are also clamoring for ship visits and spending huge “bucks” in their promotion, and we just cannot compete. He suggested our cruise ship vendor’s offer free tours to our cruise ship CREWS, so they will convey to passengers onboard their ship that Haines has wonderful tours and there is a reason to leave the vessel and visit our town.
BUT we can “boost” that suggestion up several “notches” by initiating a whole new proactive approach by making our town “sparkle” and “shine” with community parks, activities, a friendly attitude and community pride. The goal is to drive the ship planners CRAZY thinking they have missed something!
Haines should be unique to visitors and present one of Alaska’s only cruise destination’s to provide insight into the daily lives of “real Alaskan’s”, instead of the MEGA shopping centers offering T-shirt shops, tourism stuff made in China, and jewelry stores found at every Alaskan port.
Create a reason for visitors to carry the message back to their ship or RV, that Haines was the best stop of their “whole trip”!
Have “recognition day” for random crew members! (Each ship has almost as many crew members as passengers). Our Mayor greets them at the dock (in view of their fellow crew members and passengers”). Each receives a ride in our fire truck with police escort to a presentation in our old school gym’s stage (Gym filled with local vendors tables), given “Keys To Our City” for a Day”. Plus $50 local gift certificate and merchant discount card for that day and lunch with our Mayor.
The potential is tremendous! You can bet crew members will think positive about Haines and share their experiences with passengers! We may get more passengers off the ship and into our town. It is an inexpensive sales approach and unique to anywhere in Alaska, which makes us special!
When our visitors arrive in Haines we need a place for them to rest and visit. A good prospect is our old school site right in heart of town with grass, picnic tables, flowers, shelters and historic visual displays (old logging and mining equipment, commercial fishing boats or?).
Use this area to inform visitors of what to see and do and where to shop while in Haines by creating informational kiosks and displays. Might be a far better expenditure of our limited tourism dollars and will certainly dress up our town.
Make Haines a positive, beautiful and friendly experience for all our visitors!
Joe Poor
Received July 18, 2011 / Posted July 19, 2011
Viewpoints letters are the opinion of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Haines Alaska News.
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