While the Alaska real estate market continues to hold steady, industry growth has been moderate in large part due to the state-wide recession over the last few years.
Economic officials do expect stronger numbers over the next 24 months, but what can local-area real estate agents do right now to bridge the gap?
We believe one potential revenue stream worth exploring is Alaskan cruise visitors. While other areas of our economy are struggling, cruise tourism in the state is positively booming.
How can this potentially help you? Let’s take a look at what is happening with the cruise industry here and how that might help your sales strategy.
Just How Big Is Alaska Cruise Tourism?
Right now Juneau, Sitka, Skagway, Seward, and Valdez are the primary ports of call, but the powers that be are working double time on opening more. Some stats:
1.3 million tourists arrive in Alaska by cruise ship every year.
Juneau alone has experienced a 50-percent increase in cruise travelers.
Alaska Journal says, “Not only are more ships coming to Alaska, [but] the ships are getting larger.”
What’s more, the top three activities cruise ship tourists engage in when they arrive are eating at restaurants, buying souvenirs… and going on guided tours. Other research has found that a significant number of people search for homes in the place they’re vacationing.
It just so happens that guided home tours are your specialty. So, what if you created a dream listing tour for cruise passengers? You might even be able to get cruise lines to promote it as an excursion.
Create a Dream Real Estate Tour Excursion
With a well thought out route, we believe this could really be something higher-end cruise passengers will find entertaining.
Here are a couple of thought starters for developing a dream real estate tour excursion:
Only include your most spectacular properties on the tour, and focus on making the experience entertaining.
Work with the cruise lines that dock nearest to your property listings. Find out what local businesses they are already partnering with and recommending.
Depending on port time, you could choose to include a breakfast or lunch catered by a local restaurant on your very best balcony or patio.
While your captive group audience is enjoying a meal at your exclusive luxury real estate location, provide a beautiful brochure with this and other properties not included on the tour.
You likely already know that a good number of Alaska real estate transactions actually happen online and long-distance. However, we think talking directly with a live cruise ship audience is a great opportunity to build real excitement about having access to this surrounding beauty all year.
Once you have a general outline of what you want to do, you’ll want to seek out the right partnerships to bring the idea to fruition.
Pitch Your Excursion and Negotiate Tour Terms
Once you have everyone on board, negotiate with your partners on how to best make the tour happen. Choose a few key partners and properties and share your out-of-the-box marketing plan with them. This will also give you a headstart on promotions.
Before you sit down with anyone involved, though, you’ll need a professional mock-up of your excursion ideas and promotional tools. DMD can partner with you in creating many of these materials to help you snare the high-end partnerships you need to make the idea a success.
A New Twist on the Open House Pitch
There are so many directions you can go with your promotional efforts - on each ship, around town, and inside your partnering businesses. But ultimately, you should think of this dream excursion tour as nothing more than a new twist on holding an open house. The difference is that you will know ahead of time how many people will attend.
Thousands of tourists are docking and flocking into your real estate territories every day. Taking time to understand your cruise ship audience could provide you returns in spades.
Moreover, once local residents catch wind of your “in” with this captive audience, those with properties to sell are going to flock to you.
If you’re interested in talking through how we think we can help make your dream tour come true, reach out!