Robin, Jessica and I are headed to Alaska next week. We’ll be caravaning in an RV, setting up for conference, attending the EIC banquet, plus kayaking, hiking and more before we return to Montana. Needless to say, that’s a lot of gear to pack!

Here are 10 tips to help you pack light for travel:

See you in Alaska!

I keep telling Robin that I have a lost calling as a travel agent. While I have no plans for a career change any time soon, I certainly enjoy my task of coordinating all travel for our office (and occasional family members who ask). And since last week we just booked our transportation up to Alaska, let me share some tips on finding the best prices on airfare:

Tip #1: Start with a flight search engine

Personally I prefer Orbitz, but there are several others to choose from, such as Expedia, Priceline and Kayak. All of these sites will typically find you similar flights and similar prices, so it pretty much comes down to a matter of personal preference. I find Orbitz to have the easiest tools for planning flexible travel (which is Tip No. 2!).

The benefit of a flight search engine is two-fold: (1) It can help you compare a wide range of options very quickly by allowing you to adjusting travel dates or airports, and (2) it can combine flights from different airlines to help you find deals you could not find from a single carrier’s website. For example, our editor recently went on a trip where Priceline provided her with a Delta flight to her destination and then a United flight to return home.

Even if you want to book through a certain airline directly to use miles or just because you feel safer booking a flight that way, a search engine can tell you where to start. It can help you find the best days to find cheap travel and the cheapest airline to book through. Remember: There is no guarantee you will be able to find the exact same flight you find on a search engine directly from that airline’s website, but it will usually put you on the right track. But because all of the major booking engines no longer charge booking fees, in many cases there is no reason to go directly to the individual airline’s website.

Here at OWAA headquarters, we book much of our office travel through Orbitz without any problem. I was even able to change a flight that I booked through Orbitz and only had to pay the change fee for the airline I was flying on. But if you know there is a high probability of a last-minute change to your flight plans, it may be easier if you are booked through one airline.

One exception: No online search engines can access Southwest airlines flights and pricing, so if Southwest flies to both your departure and arrival destination, be sure to check their website separately. If you planning to check at least one bag, be sure to consider this added cost for other airlines when comparing Southwest to others. Southwest does not fly to Alaska or Montana, sadly.

Tip #2: Be flexible

For any number of reasons, some that seem to make no sense at all, airfare can vary widely when making even small changes, so try to vary many different things and you could find large savings. For example, my sister occasionally visits, flying out of the DC area, and the trip is almost always several hundred dollars cheaper if she flies out of Baltimore airport instead of Dulles. It is an extra half hour of drive time, but the savings can make the difference between coming out to visit or not. This is where search engines can be very helpful. When searching for flights on Orbtiz, there are 2 easy check boxes to allow you to evaluate a wide range of options: “Search airports within 80 miles” and “Search 3 days before and after.”

Even if you have one airport that is larger than anything else in the area, occasionally smaller, regional airports can end up being cheaper for specific routes, so if you would willing to look at different airports, check this box. If an extra 45 minute drive is possible and maybe worth $100, just have the website show you your options. Now Missoula does not have any other airports within 80 miles, so this doesn’t do me much good usually, but can be a great tool for other destinations. And you even have the option to check or uncheck this box for each destination. So if you have flexibility to get to different airports at your starting location because you are driving yourself or getting a ride from a friend, but need to arrive at a certain airport, for a specific purpose, only check the box for your “From” city or vice versa.

And while this may not apply to every trip, travel experts tell us that flying Tues-Thur or even any weekdays, is often cheaper than flying on the weekends. In some cases, the price difference can be enough to justify an extra hotel night or two at your destination, so if you have a little wiggle room on your dates, trying looking at multiple options. When checking this box, Orbtiz will show you a matrix of the cheapest flight prices for each arrival/destination date combination and highlight the lowest combination in the bunch. This can be especially helpful for our Alaska conference because their are so many great pre- and post-conference opportunities for members, even a huge number of free options, that the extra day(s) may pay for themselves in story material and flight savings.

And search engines allow you to piece together different flight combinations if you are flexible on one end of a trip and not the other. If you see the perfect return flight that limits your layovers and gets you in a reasonable time, you can select that return flight and look just at flight combinations with that return itinerary.

Finally, especially with a trip like Alaska, you can also consider a “Multi-city ticket.” A multi-city ticket is when you leave and depart from different airports. For Alaska this could mean something like flying from your hometown to Fairbanks, taking the train to Anchorage after conference, and then flying from Anchorage back home. Multi-city tickets can also include more than just two trips, so you could book a flight up to Fairbanks for conference, flying from Fairbanks down to Anchorage after conference, and then fly home from Anchorage or travel on to somewhere like Juneau and fly home from there. They can be as complex or simple as you would like. Sometimes you can just book multiple 1 way tickets, but if you book it as a multi-city, you have the convenience of one reservation and sometimes you can find better deals that booking individually or booking a simple roundtrip ticket.

The number of options you have can be overwhelming, but with online search tools, you can usually manipulate many of these variables pretty quickly if you sit down and devote 15-20 minutes to doing a little research. The payoff can be substantial.

Tip #3: Follow the rules

Rules are made to be broken and you shouldn’t pass up what looks like a good ticket just because you aren’t following the above guidelines, but here are a few quick hard-and-fast industry rules:

• Earlier is usually better. Sometimes you can find great last-minute deals, but unless you are flying between two major destinations, such last-minute deals are very hard to come by. And if you NEED to go somewhere, you could end up paying much more. Typically, fares are lowest 4-6 months and 4-6 weeks prior to travel.
• The best days of the week to fare shop are Tuesday and Wednesday, usually in the afternoon.
• On any given flight, there are usually a limited number of seats on available for people wanting to redeem mileage points, and on holidays, sometimes there are none. So if you would like to use airlines miles, book even earlier. And if your airline miles airline does not fly into your destination, you can usually book flights on partner airlines for a small fee (and these days it seems like all airlines are partners with each other…).

Tip #4: Cheaper is not always better

This rule may or may not apply. When I was in college, cheaper was ALWAYS better. But even if you think this is true for you, be sure to check your flight carefully before booking. When I was searching for our flights, the cheapest flight was $271. However – this flight had 3 legs and took 14 hours, getting us in to Anchorage at 1:30 in the morning. The flight we actually booked for $322 has 2 legs, taking the shortest root of Missoula-Seattle-Anchorage, getting us to Alaska in 6 hours and arriving at the very reasonable hour of 11:34 a.m. (flying West is the best!). Be sure to look at arrival and departure times, number of flights each direction, layover times (especially if a missed connection would be a catastrophe), and total flight time — and balance these factors with differences in pricing.

 My next post will be a quick note about shuttle options from Fairbanks to Chena Hot Springs Resort, but until then, just know that late-night arrivals and departures are fairly common when flying in and out of Alaska, so the shuttle will be prepared for this type of situation. Good luck flight shopping and feel free to call our office with any questions, 406-728-7434! ◊

Jessica Pollett grew up outside of Seattle, Wash., before heading out East to get her bachelor’s degree in business administration from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. She moved to Missoula in January 2010, before joining the OWAA team in May 2010. Pollett has volunteered in nonprofit event planning with the American Red Cross and the Ronald McDonald House of Missoula and continues to volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House of Missoula on the weekends and for special events. She enjoys camping, visiting National Parks, snowboarding and is excited to explore the beautiful outdoors in Montana. Contact Jessica Pollett at jpollett[at]owaa.org.

Currently, the only cell phone company that gets service up at Chena Hot Springs is Verizon Wireless. All other cell phone companies will likely get zero service. While I cannot speak from personal experience for any company besides T-Mobile, during our visit this past August I did not just get bad service at the Resort, I got no service at all. Going outside didn’t help, walking towards the road didn’t help. I got my messages and texts about halfway through the drive back down to Fairbanks. And was told that was typical for other carriers as well.

And for those of you that do have Verizon service, even this service is relatively new and is voice service only. Robin had her Verizon smartphone and was able to make phone calls without incident, but did not receive emails to her phone while at the Resort.

For some, this situation may provide the perfect opportunity to shut off technology for a couple of days. But for anyone who thinks they may experience unbearable cell phone withdrawal, a prepaid, Verizon cell phone is a great option. To ensure service at the Resort, you should make sure the prepaid phone and the minutes are Verizon specific, but both the phone and the minutes should be available at a Verizon store or other local retailers such as Walmart and Target. Typically basic phones can be found for as little as $20 and then varying minute bundles are available depending on how much talking you intend to do. You could even forward your current phone to your prepaid phone and would barely miss a beat! But no matter what kind of pre-paid phone you buy, you still will not be able to use data at the Resort. Internet is a different situation…

Internet service too is limited at the Resort and unfortunately even less reliable than the cell service as the satellite delivery makes it susceptible to weather interference. There is no internet available in the guest rooms, but the Activity Center will serve as our working press room as wireless is available in this area. Even here, the satellite service is no match for the high-bandwidth fiber-optics many of us have been accustomed too, so internet service will likely be slow and we will have to try to limit the number of people online at any given time. We would recommend all attendees try to limit their internet needs. Large file downloads or video streaming will likely be unsuccessful, though I was able to get caught up on my return emails in relatively decent time during our visit.

There is one internet alternative also made possible by the Verizon cell tower: Verizon Mobile Broadband USB Modems. For those of you that already use or own one of these Verizon internet thumb drives, again you are in luck. For those with monthly service plans, the service will be available at Chena just as you use it regularly. For those that own one of the Verizon modems, but do not currently have service enabled, pre-pay data is available through Verizon for varying amounts of data to allow you to access the internet at the Resort. If you do not already have a Verizon USB modem, you could also use the pre-pay option similar to the phone, but as is typical with pay-as-you-go service, you are required to pay full price for the hardware and in this case, the full price of a Verizon USB modem is $250. If you plan to use the USB modem beyond just our conference or could find a used device somewhere for cheaper, this may be an option, but it also is unlikely to be feasible for most.

Now I tell you all of this not to discourage you from attending, but merely to manage expectations. Our staff will be planning accordingly and will be doing all we can to help make the situation as workable as possible. We will bring walkie talkies for our staff to keep us in quick communication throughout the event and we will also have our office phone forwarded to a prepaid Verizon cell phone so we can continue to receive calls made to our office while on-site. We will also work with Verizon to see if any special accommodations can be made to provide less expensive USB modems and emergency phones for attendees and speakers to use. Finally, we will be using out of office messages on our email accounts to alert people of our limited email access while at the Resort and provide means to reach us by phone with any urgent messages. This way we can be flexible as to how much we access the internet and try to avoid peak times and leave those available for attendees. My Facebook news feed will just have to wait until after conference!

Should you have any questions, concerns or suggestions regarding cell or internet service at our 2012 conference, you contact me at jpollett@owaa.org or 406-728-7434. We look forward to seeing you up there!

Next up…travel and transportation tips.

When considering Alaska for a conference location, the prospect was exciting, but also worrisome. With a tourism slogan like “The Last Frontier,” we could hardly pick a more interesting, sell-able place for outdoor communicators, but the experience doesn’t come cheap unfortunately and we were aware that because it was Alaska, not everyone would want or be able to attend. After finding a place like Chena Hot Springs Resort and a CVB like the one in Fairbanks; however, we knew that we could have a conference that many could not afford to miss. And with a smaller host site, we could easily accommodate the smaller audience we anticipated. We were in for a bit of a shock then when the topic of the Alaska conference came up prior to the membership meeting at the Salt Lake City conference and over half the room raised their hands to say they would be willing to put a deposit that day to save a spot for Alaska. We faced the complete opposite possibility than we anticipated: that because it was Alaska, everyone would want to come! Oh and their spouses and families wanted to come as well!

Luckily Robin and Kevin had come up with creative solutions for this possibility when the idea was conceived 2 years ago and we quickly switched our focus to accommodating as many people as possible.

First step – OWAA headquarters will be coordinating all housing directly. This will allow me to talk to each registrant personally and find the best housing solution possible. I will be calling each registrant to coordinate their housing arrangements after their registration is received. If you have registered already and not heard from me yet, I apologize – I am trying to finish gathering all of the information I can about each housing option so that I can answer any questions you may have when I begin making arrangements. But do not worry – I will make housing arrangements in the order that the registrations were received.

Second step – Use all available beds. Since all of the rooms at Chena have at least 2 beds, we are requiring each room have at least 2 people staying in it. There are a total of 72 Double Rooms and 8 Family Suites with 176 beds and we hope to fill all of them. This will be a cost-saving measure for many as well since we have negotiate room rates around our standard $99/night, but now that cost can be split. Since our roommate list is often underutilized at conference, we recognize this will be a large change for many attendees, but  we hope attendees will think of it as an opportunity to catch up with an old friend or meet someone new and be understanding that we want to allow as many people as possible to take advantage of this conference experience. Having just been to Chena Hot Springs this August, I can tell you that what we give up in the number of rooms, we more than make up for in amazing, remote outdoor adventure that is the Resort. We would not be able to get this same experience at a larger location.

The question this new “rule” brings up is most often about spouses. And yes, spouses count as a second person. While spouses are more than welcome to share their room with another friend or couple, we will NOT be requiring couples to share a room with anyone else, unless they want to. However, we have also coordinated alternative spouse and family housing options to optimize the experience for attending guests. We encourage all spouse, families and guests to consider this option. For more information, see “Fourth step” below!

Third step – Take advantage of your surroundings. In addition to the lodge rooms, Chena boasts 7 yurts, 21 RV sites along the river and more space than we would ever need to fit wall and dome tents and additional RVs. RVs and tents will serve as an alternative for individuals who do not want to share a hotel room and all of these lodging options will serve as a fun escape from the traditional conference hotel rooms. OWAA’s staff will be renting an RV for the duration of conference and I could not be more excited for the adventure of it. We have coordinated with RV companies in both Fairbanks and Anchorage to negotiate rates and we are working with a wall tent manufacturer in Fairbanks to arrange for insulated wall tents. We can also rent sleeping pads and down sleeping bags from the local university to outfit you for the whole experience if you don’t want to bring your own. There is a potable water station, plenty of outhouses scattered about and all guests at Chena have access the hot springs and the adjoining pool house, complete with locker rooms and showers. By incorporating these additional lodging opportunities we can significantly increase our capacity and offer an even more authentic outdoor experience for those who crave it! We get some funny looks when we describe our arrangements to some, but then we remind them that for many of our members, this is exactly what they would prefer! You can even use the RV to easily coordinate a driving tour of Alaska before or after conference. Talk to the Fairbanks CVB for suggestions or itineraries.

Following discussions at the Salt Lake City conference, there were some concerns about the ability to feed everyone should we start filling up the Resort, but rest assured we will work with the Resort to feed everyone. We will likely eat most of meals buffet-style to reduce the pressure on the prep and wait staff, but day-events as large as 1000 people are held annually at the Resort including meals.

For RV rentals, the RVs will not be on-site at Chena upon arrival, but can be picked up in Fairbanks or Anchorage, depending on which airport you choose to fly into. Since both RV companies are small, local companies, the RVs will need to be returned to their original pick-up location. Both companies offer a “drop-fee” ranging from $850-$1000 if you would like to leave your RV in the opposite city from where you picked it up and have them transport it back. More information on the models and pricing can be found on the Travel & Lodging page.

Fourth step – Explore Fairbanks. While Chena Hot Springs has a wide variety of activities and trails available on-site, the Resort is located 60 miles east of Fairbanks, so we will be slightly cut-off from the urban Fairbanks area during conference. While this remote feeling is often what we go for, it is less convenient for families and spouses who come along. We make efforts to provide additional programming and activities for these guests with the help of the local CVB at each conference and we are more cutoff from CVB resources up at Chena. There are also no alternative dining options at Chena during the conference as it is taking their entire food staff to feed our conference attendees. Anyone staying at Chena will need to be registered for conference to attend conference meals, or would need to bring and store all of their own food from Fairbanks. Unfortunately the rooms do not have refrigerators, so this would likely only be a feasible option in an RV. All of these factors combined with concerns over lodging space, led to our decision to arrange for alternative spouse, family and guest lodging closer to Fairbanks. A Taste of Alaska Lodge has graciously offered to house any of our guests. The Lodge,  just outside Fairbanks, provides great opportunities for wildlife viewing and hiking on the 280 acre property and also give access to the recreational, dining and entertainment activities available in Fairbanks. With room for 20-30 people, it would be a great gathering place for OWAA spouses, families and guests. The main lodge room could accommodate craft classes, such as a local watercolor artist, and the dining room serves breakfast every morning to kick off the day. Fairbanks CVB is committed to providing transportation and coordinating programming as needed for all of our guests in Fairbanks. We will also have a day-trip up to Chena Hot Springs on Thursday, Sept. 6 so that all guests can experience conference favorites such as the Ladies Shoot, the Photo Scavenger Hunt and the EIC and Honorary Awards Banquet, as well as the fun of the hot springs and the Resort. While we do not require that spouses and guests stay in Fairbanks, we strongly encourage you to consider to this option. We feel it is a win-win: freeing up space at the Resort and providing a space for OWAA spouses, families and guests to stay as a group and take advantage of the great opportunities the Fairbanks community has to offer!

To end my long-winded explanation of the housing situation: We see this conference as an opportunity to combine the outdoors experience with our traditional program and are looking to customize the trip for each attendee. We hope to accommodate everyone who wishes to join us for our 85th annual conference and only ask for an open-mind and flexibility. We recognize that our alternative lodging opportunities will not interest everyone and if you feel that a traditional hotel room would achieve  your ideal Alaska experience, we ask that you register early. Housing will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Please contact me with any questions about lodging or the conference in general, I would be happy to answer any additional questions. You can reach me at 406-728-7434 or jpollett@owaa.org.

More posts to come. If you have more information you would like covered by me, Bill or anyone else on the planning team, comment below and let us know!

-Jessica Pollett, OWAA Conference Coordinator

By unanimous decision of the OWAA board, the 2012 OWAA conference registration fee will be adjusted to cover anticipated costs for member meals and related convention expenses. OWAA President Mike Walker noted that the conference fee of $190 has not changed in five years, while the organization’s per-member conference costs have increased.

The Fairbanks conference offers OWAA members a unique chance to see the best of Alaska’s hunting, angling and outdoors opportunities. Stay-tuned for more information on pre- and post-conference trips and a range of activities for the entire family to enjoy. Space at the conference site is limited – register today!

For questions and news updates, check back to the conference blog. Hear updates and answers to frequently asked questions from OWAA’s conference coordinator, conference program chair and more.

First topics coming soon: conference housing FAQs and cell/wireless information at Chena!