When it comes to incentives, Anchorage is a city whose natural bounty becomes an outdoor playground for attendees.
It’s not unusual to see businessmen and women don waders before work or during lunch breaks and head to Ship Creek, downtown Anchorage’s salmon fishery. Here, amid craft breweries, the best of Broadway, cultural museums and more than 7,800 hotel rooms, the city’s lakes offer prized, year-round trout and salmon fishing. The Anchorage Marriott Downtown, The Lakefront Anchorage and Alyeska Resort are just some of the convention hotels in the area, and include everything from AAA Four Diamond cuisine and lakeside meeting spaces to views of the majestic Denali, North America’s highest peak. The Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center brings nearly 200,000 sf of flexible event space to the downtown core, while also giving voice to the traditions and heritage of the Dena’ina Athabascan people through Alaska Native art.
One of the most sought-after experiences is a glacier and wildlife cruise into Prince William Sound, Kenai Fjords National Park and Portage Lake. During an excursion with Chugach Adventures, groups float through an iceberg maze and hop ashore for a beachside salmon bake.
When it comes to incentives, Anchorage is a city whose natural bounty becomes an outdoor playground for attendees.
A cruise with Phillips Cruises and Tours, meanwhile, usually comes with up-close and personal encounters with sea otters, whales, Dall’s porpoise, kittiwakes, bald eagles and even mountain goats. Rafting on Alaska’s wild rivers, snowmobile riding across ancient glaciers and parasailing from mountain tops should also be on your to-do list.
Anchorage also has a reputation for meals and drinks worth savoring—found in inconspicuous places—whether reindeer sausage from a hotdog cart or fare by James Beard-nominated chefs tucked into line malls. At the Anchorage Distillery, glacier melt vodka, arctic ice moonshine and aurora borealis gin are among the booty of spoils. All spirits are made from grains grown in Northern Alaska and distilled Alaska glacier water. A new brewery serving hybrid Belgian-Alaskan beers also recently opened. Groups can wet their whistles with Alaska raspberry lambic ale, tripel and Flanders-style red ale or a rhubarb sour at Turnagain Brewery.
