Could Your Next Client Come from an Alaskan Cruise Ship?

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! 

Take Your Home Staging Up a Notch: Partner With Local Brands

Here at DMD, this is something we’ve seen over and over again working with our realtor clients: spending a few hundred dollars to stage the homes you’re selling is a wise investment - it can increase a home’s value by up to 5%.

Something else we’ve learned? You don’t have to break the bank to stage a home. The median dollar value spent on staging homes in 2019 was $400. 

That’s not a budget-buster, but DMD knows how you can save even more - and make your home staging more special.

How? By partnering with local Alaskan brands.

Why Should You Partner With Local Brands To Stage Homes?

You Can Save Some Cash

Home staging requires furniture, decor, and other items that make the home look livable. Maybe you need a unique entertainment center or kitchen table to help clients picture themselves living in the home. 

All of these items cost money - and they might not be appropriate for every listing. When you partner with local brands to provide furniture or decor for your homes, you won’t have to buy these items (and you can give them back when the staging is over). 

Saving cash to make your home more unique and appealing to buyers? Sounds like a win-win. 

Partnerships Show You Are a Team Player

When you partner with Alaskan brands, you build a network. Within that network are members of the community who can spread the word about your products and services. (Plus, they may want to get the word out about their products being used in your listings!)

The more businesses you partner with, the more of a team player you become in the area where your clients live. 

You’ve Got Options

What brands do you want to partner with? There are plenty of options if you keep your mind open:

• Furniture brands or manufacturers

• Local artists

• Interior designers 

• Music stores (that sell pianos, guitars, drum kits, etc.)

Use beautiful planters from a local potter. Or fill the house with succulents from a local outdoor store. The options are endless!

How to Partner With Local Brands 

Think Outside the Box 

What products will make your homes stand out to buyers? A statue? An antique lampshade? Wacky decorations in the front yard? 

Think of different ways to stage a home to give it the personality that will speak to buyers. Then, reach out to businesses you think may be interested.

What’s In It For Them? 

When local businesses put their products in your homes, they have a unique opportunity to advertise their brand and even sell the staged products. Tell buyers about your partnership and that the art on the walls or the piano in the living room is for sale. Give buyers your partners’ business cards. 

Communicate these opportunities (and your successes) with potential partners. They will be more likely to haul their products into your home if they know they can make a sale or gain new clients. 

Start Looking Now

Don’t wait until you schedule an open house to stage the home. The right decor can seriously enhance the professional photos that you use to advertise the home online. Reach out to brands now before you schedule the photoshoot. 

Want more information about staging and how it can boost the quality of the photos and help you sell properties for more? Reach out to us for more information. 

Introducing Photographer and Drone Pilot Max Slama

DMD Real Estate Photography is home to a team chock full of talent. And that talent reaches beyond the scope of simply taking pictures of our partnering agents’ listings. 

One team member we are especially excited to introduce is Anchorage native and outdoor enthusiast Max Slama.

Max got his start in traditional photography at an early age - his first camera was a gift from his dad - establishing the fundamentals and honing his craft against the backdrop of our Alaskan landscape. From there he ventured down to Oregon to further his education, getting a degree in graphic design. 

This creative training comes through in his gallery planning and composition, and the myriad of brochures, flyers, and other design projects our real estate clients need a hand with. 

But what really clinched the deal for us when deciding to bring Max into the DMD fold was his highly sought-after experience piloting drones. 

After a few years in the industry, he recognized the real estate photography market shifting toward the use of drone technology early on. He also understood the impact this skill would have on his work as a real estate photographer. 

Besides, who wouldn’t love to fly drones on the job? 

So, Max jumped at the chance to learn… and when we met him, we jumped at the chance to bring him on board. 

Just talk to him and you can’t help but get swept up in the idea of seeing Alaska (and your listing) from an eye-opening perspective. In fact, when we asked Max what his favorite part of drone photography was, that’s exactly what he said: perspective.

Capturing smooth video footage. Grabbing wide property angles from hundreds of feet in the air. Seeing landmarks within context. Even just a couple of feet above the height of an average person can result in absolutely smashing shots of a home’s exterior.

(He told us having the chance to boat out to your remote property locations over pristine Alaskan lakes isn’t too bad either.)

We see every day how Max Slama’s unique combination of skills and his special dedication to the craft of drone photography impacts the success of each and every one of our clients. Here at DMD, we love having Max’s many talents as valuable resources to you.

If you need help capturing your property from the right angles and are interested in learning more about how our Max can use drones to do it, reach out!