About a month ago, 40 Juneau residents boarded the state ferry and traveled to Skagway for the Buckwheat Ski Classic, a decades-old event that attracts visitors from Haines, Juneau, Whitehorse and other towns.
For two days, those 40 Juneau folks ate at local restaurants, slept in Skagway lodges, drank in the town’s watering holes and likely deposited about $15,000 into the town’s economy.
In late February, Haines celebrated “Winterfest,” a two-day celebration the last weekend in February put together by former tourism director Leslie Ross. It includes the Mount Ripinsky mountain race, the Miles Ski Classic ski event at 25 Mile and the Winter Games at the state fairgrounds.
But there was no state ferry service to Haines that weekend because no one had requested the state to send one up. Winterfest attracted a few Canadians and even fewer Juneau residents.
I asked Haines tourism director Steve Auch if he could arrange to get the event on the ferry schedule, as the mountain race particularly has proved a big draw for backcountry skiers from around the region in past years.
Auch told me that his job was promotion, not planning.
Fair enough, but if it’s not someone’s job to arrange a ferry on Winterfest weekend, a ferry won’t happen and Winterfest will largely fail as a promotional event.
Winterfest isn’t our only town event that needs help. The Alaska Bald Eagle Festival has struggled for years. The American Bald Eagle Foundation doesn’t have enough promotional money to get crowds here or enough volunteer and community buy-in to sustain the festival as a flagship tourism event.
That’s remarkable because we get the main attraction – eagles – absolutely free. All we must provide are the side dishes, enough activities around town to keep folks busy when they’re not standing with binoculars at 20 Mile.
The eagle festival started grandly as a Haines Chamber of Commerce event, with activities, crowds and a visit and speech by legendary Alaska Gov. Jay Hammond at the Chilkat Center. The Chamber dropped the festival and responsibility for it fell to the eagle foundation. As a community, we have allowed it to fall on hard times.
We can’t count on the Chamber of Commerce to help prop up the eagle festival or Winterfest. The Chamber has recently stepped away from community events, most recently divesting itself of the annual Spring Clean-Up, an effort the group led for more than 100 years.
Assistant director Andrew Letchworth explained to me that the Chamber, after a recent members’ survey, has turned in a new direction, with advocacy as its top priority, followed by advertising member businesses and – as its third priority – community events. Fair enough.
Letchworth is a newcomer to town and he’ll need help to organize the Haines Fourth of July, an event the Chamber has not yet relinquished.
The point here is this: Thirty-five years ago our community dedicated itself to tourism as a means of sustaining our community, as reliance on heavy industry had proved unsuccessful. Mines and oil pipelines and large sawmills came and went. Tourism was the answer for creating a steady stream of income.
Our town has made some great strides in weekend events including the Great Alaska Craft Beer and Homebrew Festival and the Southeast Alaska State Fair. Our other events need more support and, in some cases, resuscitation.
Roger Gentry is a newcomer to town who is directing next weekend’s Agatha Christie play at the Chilkat Center.
Gentry told me that he would be advertising the show in Skagway and Juneau and that it didn’t really matter to him if anyone from those towns showed up as much as it was important to him that people there know that they could come and that events are happening in Haines.
That’s the attitude and effort we’ll need for tourism to succeed here.