The Skagway Visitor Department is promoting an online survey that addresses sustainable tourism. They hope the results will help Skagway understand how to support visitors and improve quality of life for residents.
Jaime Bricker, Skagway’s tourism director, is encouraging Skagwegians to take the time to complete a short questionnaire.
“This is an academic study that’s funded for five years and looks at tourism destinations all over the West Coast, even in other countries,” Bricker says. “The data collected is a tool for our community, a tool for you. So anybody who responds to this survey, we will eventually be owners of that data, and we’ll be able to look at it, use it.”
The survey is run by Oregon State University’s Sustainable Tourism Lab.
Lori Lerwill is a mother with four teenagers. She’s also an undergraduate student at Oregon State, studying hospitality management. She spent five days in Skagway helping to launch the survey.
“The mission statement of the lab is to protect tourist destinations for future generations of visitors and residents,” Lerwill says. “So, my job is to go into communities that experience a high volume of tourism, gather data through surveys, talk to the locals regarding their sentiments towards the tourism in their areas. So as a university, we’re just that third neutral party that comes in to listen to you and collect data.”
With the help of the Visitor Department, Lerwill toured Skagway, visiting the school, Skagway Traditional Council, Garden City Market, Seven Pastures during live music — anywhere she could interact with locals and help them understand how and why to access the survey.
The questionnaire can be found at skagway.com/survey. It contains about 26 questions and should take less than 10 minutes to complete. Some of the questions are basic, asking for the participant’s zip code or how much of the year they live in Skagway.
Other questions are trickier. One question reads:
“To address congestion on Broadway in the Historic District, do you think the Municipality should
-Make Broadway one-way northbound traffic
-Close Broadway to all vehicular traffic
-Make no changes
-Other”
Another question asks the resident to rate the overall impact of tourism on quality of life from extremely negative to extremely positive.
Lerwill says the questions are designed to create open dialog.
“Some of the questions are just standard, regardless of the area that’s being surveyed based on the academic nature of the study,” she says. “These would be more around demographic type questions. But many of the questions were created based on conversations between those involved in the lab and your local tourism leadership.”
Lerwill says her trip to Skagway was incredible.
“I had the privilege of talking to business owners, seasonal employees, year round, full-time employees, retirees, the elders of the community, just to name a few,” she says. “And I asked loads of questions, and everyone was so gracious and more than happy to engage with me. And just on a side note, I have to say that the senior social was the highlight of my trip. You have some very special people in your community. It was very heartwarming.”
Residents have until Aug. 31 to participate in the study. According to Bricker, the survey will cost the municipality about $5,000.