Marine highway expands online services

In addition to making reservations over the phone or in person, travelers can now surf the Internet to sail the marine highway.

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"Now you can make your whole reservation, search the schedule, book it and get an itinerary number online, 24 hours a day," said Capt. George Capacci, general manager of the Alaska Marine Highway System.

Online reservations, which can be made at the ferry Web site www.alaska.gov/ferry will supplement the existing reservation system, Capacci said. He said AMHS will serve customers better and hopefully increase ridership with the online system.

"We expect 98 percent of our ticket sales to go online with this system," said Chris Scholes, publications specialist for the state Department of Transportation commissioner's office. He has been heading up the ferry's online reservation effort since legislation was passed to fund the initiative two years ago.

The site became active Nov. 1 to test its usability and was announced to the public Nov. 22.

"We have gotten some really good feedback from the public," Scholes said. "We did a soft release so we could work out some of the kinks, and it's worked pretty well."

Fifty-six online reservations have been made since Nov. 1, Capacci said. Most online reservations have been from Alaska residents, but some have been from Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

The ferry system carried 180,000 passengers between May 1 and Aug. 31, 78 percent from passengers who live outside Alaska, said Capacci.

Creating the new system cost approximately $137,000, Scholes said. He said an additional $150,000 probably will be spent over the next six to nine months, leaving the grand total well below the projected $700,000 cost.

"The reason we're well below the projection is that instead of hiring outside contractors, we (the DOT) are doing it ourselves," Scholes said.

While it will probably not reduce administrative costs for the AMHS, he believes the system will generate enough new ridership to make up for the investment. AMHS staff will not be reduced due to the new system.

"Our staff is small enough to begin with, so I'd be hard pressed to say we could get rid of some people," Capacci said.

The ferry system is in the process of reworking its Web site to focus it wholly on online ticketing. A new site will be ready for the Jan. 23 "grand opening" of the system, Scholes said.

Putting the ferry service's reservation system online was considerably more difficult than it would be for other ticketing services, said Scholes.

"First, we had to make major changes to our ticket-management database - that was the biggest thing," he said. "Then we had to build the online application, the actual Web site. That was the second biggest challenge."

Because the ferry service offers many variations on a single ticket, such as multiple legs or multiple people, more than 450 possible types of tickets are available, Scholes said. The variations have complicated the process, but the online system will be able to handle most reservations.

"There's very little you can't do online," he said.

Groups and individuals with special requests will have to go through a reservation agent, as will travel agents, but even they will be able to confirm the tickets and pay for them online.

"The real thrust of the Web site was to make it so that most of the reservations come in online, and the phones are used to supplement it," Scholes said. "Our hope is that it removes difficulties that we've had in the past with our phone hold times."

Although the ferry system will not offer printable, scannable tickets right away, it hopes to have such a system by next summer.

Online ticket reservation is one of several measures the Department of Transportation is taking to improve customer service to travelers in Alaska.

"The DOT is trying to become a travel resource for people," Scholes said. He said a DOT hotline for traffic and highway information will contain state ferry tracking information by the end of December.

• Christine Schmid can be reached at cschmid@juneauempire.com.

Web links

Online ferry reservations are at www.alaska.gov/ferry