Alaska Tours

An Anchorage vacation planner covering the whole state

Alaska Tours is an Anchorage-based travel company that designs Alaska vacation packages and sells day tours, rail tours, lodge stays and small-ship cruises. Its About page describes it as "the online division of All Alaska Tours LLC, serving customers since 1991", and the homepage says it has been helping travelers discover Alaska for over thirty years. It works as a planner and seller: the products on its pages include trips on the Alaska Railroad, the Riverboat Discovery sternwheeler, stays at Borealis Basecamp and Chena Hot Springs Resort, and adventure cruises, all run by those businesses, with Alaska Tours building the itinerary, booking it and issuing the travel documents. The day-tour menu covers Anchorage, Denali, Fairbanks, Girdwood, Homer, Juneau, Kenai and Soldotna, Kennicott and McCarthy, Palmer and Wasilla, Seward, Talkeetna, Valdez and Whittier. The office is at 600 Barrow Street, Suite 200, in Anchorage, and prices are shown in US dollars.

The About page says the company is a National Tour Association member and accredited with the Airlines Reporting Corporation, and lists partnerships with Alaska, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Mat-Su and Juneau travel industry associations.

Packages, cruises and day tours

The site sorts its catalog by type (rail tours, self-drive, northern lights) and by interest: best sellers, families, winter and northern lights, pre- and post-cruise, lodge stays, small ship and adventure cruises, adventure-focused tours, guided group tours and national park tours. The homepage features several packages with prices. Alaska's Autumn Highlights Tour runs 9 days from $2,969: it starts in Anchorage with a glacier day cruise through Prince William Sound, then goes north by train to Denali National Park and on to Fairbanks. The Borealis Basecamp and Northern Lights Tour runs 5 days at $1,699, staying in fiberglass domes near Fairbanks with curved windows that stretch 16 feet across the roof so guests can watch the aurora from bed. The Alaska Dreams Winter Tour runs 7 days at $2,549, by train with nights in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Borealis Basecamp, and an optional glacier trek or a visit to the Wildlife Conservation Center. The Alaska Winter Wonders Tour, at $2,079, starts with nights in Girdwood and rides the Aurora Winter Train from Anchorage to Fairbanks.

Adventure cruises are sold for the Inside Passage. The Alaska Fjords and Glaciers Cruise runs 8 days at $4,400 from Juneau or Ketchikan, through Dawes Glacier, the Wrangell Narrows, Behm Canal and Misty Fjords National Monument, with daily guided kayaking, hiking or motorized skiff outings. The Glacier Bay National Park Adventure Cruise is a seven-night round trip from Juneau covering Glacier Bay, Icy Strait, Tracy Arm and Frederick Sound, and Alaska's Glacier Wilderness with Glacier Bay Cruise, another seven-night Juneau round trip that adds Kuiu Island, is listed at $8,800.

Fairbanks day trips give the clearest day-tour examples. The Arctic Circle Fly & Drive Tour leaves Fairbanks in the afternoon with a local guide, flies north across the Arctic Circle and returns by road on the Dalton Highway, crossing the Yukon River, for $519 to $539. A summer Arctic Circle flight adventure by small bush plane, with a 2.5-hour land tour of a local community, is $609 to $709. The Riverboat Discovery cruise on the Chena and Tanana Rivers lasts 3 hours and costs $106. A Chena Hot Springs aurora night tour picks guests up at their Fairbanks hotel around 5:00 pm for a transfer of one and a half hours, for $235 to $240, and a Chena Hot Springs aurora package is $1,109.

How a trip works

Because Alaska Tours builds packages from other companies' services, what happens on the day depends on the product: the railroad, the riverboat, the cruise ship and the lodges each run their own part. The company's role, as its About page describes it, is to plan the trip and support it. It provides detailed travel documents, "including a daily itinerary with local information and attractions, a hotel list, driving directions (if appropriate), and convenient travel vouchers", and offers "24/7 on-call emergency travel assistance during the busy summer travel season". Self-drive packages are one of the menu types, which is where the driving directions come in.

The team page introduces six staff members by role, from the tour sales manager to the general manager, with notes on their own Alaska experience: one led tours to remote Arctic regions, another spent 5 years with a glacier guiding company, and the general manager says she has worked for All Alaska Tours for over 25 years. The homepage says the Anchorage team has helped hundreds of thousands of visitors plan vacations, group trips and cruise-based travel.

Booking and contact

Day tours and packages can be added to a cart on the site, and the company also invites travelers to call or email to customize a vacation. The phone number is 907-277-3000, and the office is open Monday to Friday, 8:00am to 5:00pm AKDT, closed on weekends and US holidays, which is worth noting for travelers in other time zones. The footer links to a Booking Policies page, a FAQ and traveler reviews. Travel agents have their own login and registration, and a monthly newsletter, Under the Midnight Sun, announces new multi-day tours and day trips.

What the pages leave open, and who it suits

Cancellation, deposit and payment terms are not on the homepage or About pages; they sit on the separate Booking Policies page, which is worth reading before paying for a cruise or rail package. Package prices are "from" or ranged figures, and the package summaries do not list what each price includes, so meals, lodging grade and transfers should be checked on the individual tour page. The 24/7 assistance is described for the summer season only.

Alaska Tours suits travelers who want one Alaskan company to assemble a multi-stop trip, such as rail between Anchorage, Denali and Fairbanks, a northern lights stay or a glacier cruise, and to hand them a full itinerary and vouchers. It is also a straightforward place to book Fairbanks day trips like the Arctic Circle flights. Travelers who want to deal directly with a single operator, or need weekend phone support before they arrive, may prefer to book with the provider itself. For planning across a big state, its local team and long history are the strengths.