SEATTLE-BASED PRINCESS TOURS BUYS ALASKA HOTEL

By Paula Dobbyn, Anchorage Daily News
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

July 21, 1999
ANCHORAGE, AK--Princess Tours is expanding its reach at Denali National Park and Preserve. The Seattle-based company has signed a deal to acquire Windsong Lodge, a 72-room hotel one mile north of Alaska's most popular national park.

The 5-acre parcel is adjacent to the company's 281-room Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge.

The two hotels will be combined as of next summer, with 353 rooms, three restaurants, a gift shop, hot tubs and a dinner theater.

"We saw a long-term opportunity to grow our property and make it not just bigger but better," said Dean Brown, president of Princess Tours.

Princess bought the property for an undisclosed amount from Alaska Windsong Lodges, which recently sold its Seward-based lodge to Cook Inlet Region Inc. Jeff Ripley, one of Alaska Windsong's four owners, said the lodges were a good investment for his company but the offers by Princess and CIRI were too good to pass up.

"It wasn't like we wanted to get out of the hotel business," Ripley said. "We ran at about 95 percent occupancy."

Alaska Windsong continues to operate a lodge in Moose Pass. It also sells tour packages and operates a tourist busline linking Seward, Anchorage and Denali.

Of the five ships Princess Cruises operates in Alaska, four stop in Seward after traveling north through the Inside Passage, with many passengers continuing their vacations with tours of Denali, according to Brown. Others fly to Anchorage and spend a day or two in Denali before heading to Seward for a southbound cruise.

Brown says the time was right for Princess to make a "landside investment in Alaska to accommodate the growing numbers of vacationers we're bringing there."

If Alaska Windsong had held onto the property, it planned to expand the Denali lodge to 100 rooms. Ripley said the property should allow Princess to expand beyond the planned 353 rooms if it wants to.

(c) 1999, Anchorage Daily News.