How Many Miles
Does anyone have a rough idea of the mileage from the boarder crossing in Sweet Grass, to the Alaska boarder. John
Forum Discussion
joe b. wrote:
From the Bellingham Washington area to the Fairbanks area is roughly 50 hours driving time. You, as the driver gets to decide how many days to spread that over. The RV segment of the Alaska tourist industry is actually quite small. Most visitors arrive by ship or commercial air travel. Very few of the summer workers are Alaska residents, but are up from the Lower 48 to work for the summer, and then return home. (Most are full of advice, some of which is correct, LOL) the tourist market have a much smaller impact on Alaska, than many think. The cruise ships and Airlines headquarter in places like Seattle, Portland or Vancouver, etc. very little of that money ever makes it to Alaska. Many of the outside tour companies own hotels in Alaska, staffed but out of state employees. Most Alaska residents can't afford to quit their full year job to take a seasonal job that probably is paying minimum wages.
Out of the 2 million visitors in 2015 only half came by ship. There are approximately 27 different ships making hundreds of port calls within Alaska, and those folks and the others (all 2 million visitors) spent over 2 BILLION dollars and created 47,000 Alaskan jobs. (Data from CLIA)
Now those ships all pay Port taxes, landing fees, docking fees, buy Bunker oil, re-provision and on their days off the crews go and spend money too and on and on. Spending millions that go to taxes alone for the state to say nothing of the businesses that profit.
Those 2 million visitors will spend much of their money in restaurants, Flight seeing trips, Boat trips, raft trips, trips through Denali, and on more souvenirs than anyone could count. and this is just scratching the surface. A good share of their time in Alaska is on ground portions of their tours..not on the ships.
The truth is vast amounts of that money stay in Alaska and fuel it's economic growth and health. Take for example just transporting these tourists around Alaska requires hundreds of buses which mean full time all year jobs for mechanics, logistics people and so on. This is just one small example.
Many many Alaskans make a full time living in the tourist industry and many more depend on the seasonal influx of tourists and dollars. and I think they would disagree with the post by joe b.
The quoted post above is just a bit too simplistic in it's viewpoint.
