Our Best of 2020 – A Thank You to Our Guests
We started the year of 2020 with a sense of promise. Anchorage saw a beautiful January, with an extended period of cold, crisp with ice fog conditions that created an extended period of hoar frost. It was a beautiful, winter wonderland. Despite it being near the Solar Minimum, we had several good periods of aurora borealis activity and were busy with our Anchorage Aurora Quest tour.
Then we started to hear about the new variant of coronavirus, what has been commonly referred to as COVID-19. It seemed so far away at first, and then it reached our shores. It spread to multiple states and communities, ultimately reaching Alaska. At first, it seemed like something we could still handle while operating carefully. Then it soon became clear that the health risks were increasing, and both the State of Alaska and the Municipality of Anchorage issued health orders and mandates. We had to shut down operations, and went for over three months without operating a single tour – from March 11 to June 23. Our summer saw a 90% drop in normal revenue for that time of year.
Things started to look up in late August and September, and we began to recover. We kept going because we believe in what we offer to Alaska visitors, and because our guests had confidence in us. Visitors started to return to Alaska, and they helped us and our economy start to recover.
Many photographers create a “Top Photos” list for the previous year by examining which images achieved the most reach on social media. While we captured many wonderful images of Alaska in 2020, we wanted to celebrate our “Best of 2020” selection by highlighting our guests. It is often considered good practice to include people in landscape photos, but the people in these landscape photos are special. They are our tourism partners and our guests who helped to keep the vision of Alaska Photo Treks alive in what was a very challenging year. We had a few “firsts,” from a multi-day custom tour in the Brooks Range to a marriage proposal during the Anchorage Aurora Quest. We also added some new tourism partners, like Horizon Global Travel, Viking International Photo Tours, and Alaska Charters and Adventures.
We are excited to not only still be here serving Alaska visitors, but to be now offering new day tour and multi-day excursions. Thank you for staying with us.
