May 14, 2010

Between 1,000 to 8,000 people get off the cruise ships in Skagway each day, ready to spend the whole day in town. Of course they don’t know anything about the town, so some of them, when they are in one of the stores, will ask the salesperson “where’s a good place to”. . . eat, shop, drink, etc. Unfortunately there is a good chance that the salesperson is someone who is just there for the summer and doesn’t know what each store offers. So to turn this situation around to their benefit, a lot of stores have an annual event called the Spring Stroll. The idea is to make sure new salespeople know something about the stores - here’s how it works: Between the hours of 3pm and 6 pm everyone who works in a store can go to the Visitor Center and pick up a form that lists all the participating stores. Then we walk to each of those stores and get the form stamped in each one. Some stores offered snacks, and almost everyone had a raffle going on. The hope is that people will look around the store and learn something about it, before moving on to the next one. Randy and I went to every store on the list, and we did learn a lot about the town. Some of those stores did not open until this week, so we didn't have a chance to visit them before the cruise ships started arriving.