Seasickness refund deal drums up tour business
ANCHORAGE - A Prince William Sound marine tour company has found an eager audience for its guarantee - no seasickness.
"We get an awful lot of business because of it," said Brad Phillips, owner of Phillips' Cruises & Tours, the only day-cruise company in Alaska that advertises an anti-seasickness guarantee.
The company's refund policy works like this: You get sick, you get repaid.
A trip aboard the Klondike Express, a 137-foot vessel that can carry 342 passengers, is a rapid but smooth ride. The triple-decker catamaran, operated out of Whittier, cruises at 42 knots, nearly 50 mph.
Catamarans tend to be stable because of their double-hull design, Phillips said.
"The hulls are very sharp. They cut right through the waves," he said.
The Klondike Express is also wide, 38 feet across. The girth stops much of the side motion, or rolling, that tends to cause seasickness, said Barrie Swanberg, vice president of sales and marketing for Phillips Cruises.
Phillips invested $8.5 million to have the vessel built in 1999. It was a bit of a financial gamble. Although Phillips has a lot of name recognition, having run trips in Prince William Sound for 45 years, new players have moved into the market in recent years.
Because the ship is so fast, it enabled him to make three trips a day, Phillips said. Between the boat's inherent stability and the protected nature of the Sound, Phillips decided he could offer a no-seasickness refund as a marketing device.
"You'd be amazed at how often it sells a ticket," Swanberg said.
Swanberg said less than a handful of the vessel's 30,000 passengers last year asked for a refund.
In Southcentral Alaska, Seward is another popular launch spot for day cruises into Resurrection Bay and Kenai Fjords National Park.
To cruise along nearby Kenai Fjords National Park, the day-cruise boats leave relatively sheltered Resurrection Bay and round Aialik Cape, where swells roll in off of the Gulf of Alaska. It can make for a rocky ride.
While the water can be rougher on Seward-based cruises, the trips do offer more opportunities to see marine life, such as sea otters, harbor seals, whales and Dall's porpoises, operators said. The Prince William Sound cruises tend to feature glaciers.
Some of Phillips' competitors say they don't begrudge him marketing the anti-seasickness guarantee.
"It's a fine idea. We just haven't chosen to go that route ourselves," said Russ Major, owner of Major Marine Tours. The company offers cruises in both Prince William Sound and Kenai Fjords.