Haines Borough Tourism Director Carolann Wooton is taking big strides to get “the Adventure Capital of Alaska” on the map as a travel destination for all.

“I think adventure comes in many different forms and I’d like to try to expand that,” Wooton said. She said although Haines’ existing image as a place for high-energy outdoor activities is enticing, that kind of adventure appeals to a very niche group of people. “I don’t want to do away with the Adventure Capital, but I definitely want to expand it so that it becomes adventure for every person.”

Wooton is experimenting with advertising to showcase Haines “as a destination for the independent traveler,” which could be romantic couples, families on vacation, photographers, birders, fisherman, artists and more.

A full-page advertisement that Wooton created, including a half-page photo of a romantic couple by the fire that was taken at Mud Bay and a half-page advertorial about Haines as a romantic destination, ran in November in Horizon Travel and Lifestyle magazine in the Wall Street Journal. A teaser to the ad was featured on the front page of the magazine with a picture of actor George Clooney.

Wooton said Haines is the only town in Alaska the monthly magazine has featured.

The advertisement also ran on the Good Morning America jumbotron screen in Times Square in New York City during the week of Thanksgiving, including Black Friday where millions of shoppers visited the city. The photo had animated smoke from a bonfire and moving clouds to attract attention to the screen.

Wooton said she managed to get both placements due to a lack of ads because of Hurricane Harvey.

With the same company, another advertisement focusing on families will run in Horizon magazine in the Toronto Star newspaper and on five screens in downtown Toronto, Canada for the entire month of February.

“I think of it like fishing. Sometimes when you fish you have to throw your hook out a little bit further to try to catch something that you’re not catching here locally,” Wooton said. “We’re not detracting from things that we’ve been doing and working on, that is still being done, but I got an opportunity to do this and in advertising this is a huge amount of real estate.”

Wooton said she wants to reach people before they begin planning their vacations, from November through about March.

“It was opportune to cast my net out a little bit further to see if we could catch some people who might be thinking…everybody wants to come to Alaska,” Wooton said. “Haines has everything, but the beauty of it is we have this wonderful little community that is I think unique and this is our opportunity to showcase who we are.”

Since Wooton was hired this summer, she also started to increase Haines’ presence on social media and online. She said she started posting weekly on the official Haines, Alaska Instagram account in October, which hadn’t been active in a year, and has since increased the followers from 623 to over 900.

Wooton is also making the tourism website, visithaines.com, more visually appealing.

“I’m moving away from a content-heavy website because photography is really what sells tourism,” Wooton said. “It’s about breath-taking views and seeing people having fun. It draws you in and we need a lot more photography…I think it will draw more people to go deeper into our website.”

Although the tourism budget is limited, Wooton said she is looking for more photos of people enjoying what Haines has to offer.

Wooton is utilizing domain names that the tourism department has purchased over the years to track advertising results.

“Each unique advertiser gets their own domain name to see if they are effectively driving traffic to our website,” Wooton said. “I use this to help determine how effective our ad buys are and hopefully allow me to more effectively utilize our advertising dollars.”

Wooton also revamped the inside of the Haines Visitor Center. She got new leather furniture from Miles Furniture and reorganized the information pamphlets to focus on Haines and some close communities like Skagway and Whitehorse.

“This is the living room of Haines,” Wooton said. She said she is looking for more artwork and retail items from local shops to go on display in the building.

“My goal is to direct visitors to local retailers,” Wooton said. She said she was told when she first started the job that people weren’t often making it into stores when they visited town. “I thought this would be a passive way that I could hopefully move people in that direction.”

Wooton said she’d also like to create better partnerships with Whitehorse and Haines Junction in Yukon to encourage tourism between the communities.

“We have this great little community that I think is very real and genuine and I think people are starving for real and genuine,” Wooton said. “I think it’s going to be a good year.”