What Driving Buses In Alaska Taught Me About The “Illusion of Choice”
Years ago, during my college summers, my brothers, wife and I worked our dream jobs in Alaska driving tour buses in Juneau and Sitka.
Every day, we’d pull up to the docks as the massive cruise ships dispersed thousands of eager tourists into these historic Alaskan towns.
Our job was simple: drive them along the scenic routes, share the history / culture / wildlife / etc. and ultimately, provide them with an unforgettable Alaskan experience.
And we absolutely LOVED it.
Passengers were thrilled to be taking this once-in-a-lifetime adventure. But the expectations were high.
They wanted authentic local experiences.
They wanted to buy handmade Alaskan gifts, eat local food, and support real Alaskan families (including my personal favorite, The Alaskan Fudge Company).
They came off those ships being sold on the dream of entering an authentic, independent, wild frontier town.
But as bus drivers (insiders who spent every day behind the scenes), we quickly learned a dirty secret and an uncomfortable truth.
True Ownership of Local Shops Is A Smokescreen
Passengers would regularly pull me aside and ask:
“We believe in supporting the local economy. Where can we go to buy real, local Alaskan gifts?”
They were always shocked when I pointed down the street and replied:
“If you want to work with real Alaskan folks and put your dollars back into the local economy, go several blocks down the street by the Alaskan Fudge Company. By the way, I highly recommend you visit them. They’re 100% Alaskan-owned, and their fudge is incredible.
The truly local shops are those that are open year-round rather than only being open when cruise ships are in port. Pretty much everything south of the Red Dog Saloon is closed down the second the last ship pulls out for the season.”
Their eyes popped when they came to the same realization that almost every shop they’d see and would have to pass was, to a large degree, controlled and monetized by the cruise ships.
The Dirty Secret:
Almost none of the storefronts are controlled by local Alaskans
They had no idea that they’d walked into an illusion designed to keep them spending money inside of the carefully constructed system.
Behind the scenes, the cruise ship companies had quietly built a controlling interest in almost every single shop along the main road in downtown Juneau (Franklin Street).
The jewelry stores, the souvenir shops, the art galleries, many of the food spots, and more aren’t really putting money into the pockets of hardworking Alaskans.
In one form or another, they're controlled by the very same cruise lines that bring the passengers to port.
The few shops wholly controlled by Alaskans are at the mercy of cruise ship companies that charge massive kickbacks (often 30-50% of total revenue) just for bringing passengers to port.
If local owners don’t pay the tax, the ships don’t recommend them as part of their "Preferred Partner" lists and instead, guide thousands of passengers right past their door.
Effectively, cruise ship companies control the entire cruise experience. They control and monetize:
Their job is to play a sophisticated, clever game of controlling the key pieces of the experience, funnelling the passengers into their own ecosystem, and extracting huge profits from both sides.
They monetize tourists’ desire for an authentic experience without the tourists ever realizing they are in a closed-loop monopoly.
When passengers eventually found out, the reaction was always the same:
They felt duped.
They felt used.
And they felt angry about it.
They weren’t angry with the locals. Far from it!
In fact, they were angry on behalf of the locals.
They were angry that a massive middleman had quietly hijacked their experience and monetized their trust.
As a bus driver, I felt obliged to point guests in the right direction to give them that authentic experience they were looking for and, in some small way, fight for my local Alaskan friends to get a fair shake.
So I steered them to The Alaskan Fudge Company.
The Modern Alaskan Tourist Trap: ILSs, OTAs, & Other 3rd-Party Listing Sites
Years later, when working in real estate digital marketing, the exact same pattern hit me like a ton of bricks:
Property operators, asset managers, and business owners are living in the exact same Alaskan tourist trap.
You think you're the business owner serving your customers. But to the aggregators, both you and your prospective tenants are just commodities to be funneled, taxed, and monetized.
Ship Entry
You can duplicate this section and use it in multiple places on your sales page, wherever you need to elaborate on something.
Ship Entry
You can duplicate this section and use it in multiple places on your sales page, wherever you need to elaborate on something.
Ship Entry
You can duplicate this section and use it in multiple places on your sales page, wherever you need to elaborate on something.
Ship Entry
You can duplicate this section and use it in multiple places on your sales page, wherever you need to elaborate on something.
In some ports, they own the entire island and everything on it.
To a tourist, it feels like a vibrant local marketplace.
But when you look closer, it’s a carefully scripted illusion designed to extract every single penny from each visitor before heading to the next port to rinse & repeat the process.
The Middleman Tax
You are repeatedly paying for leads you should already own
The Cycle of Permanent Dependency
Every booking through an OTA or every lease through an ILS comes with a hidden cost that goes far beyond the exorbitant commissions. When these platforms sit between you and your guest, they don't just take your margin. They take your data.
By controlling the relationship, they force you into a cycle of permanent dependency. You are effectively "renting" your own customers, paying a success fee every time you want to win back that same paying guest.
The Hidden Mechanics of the Game
Most operators don't realize that the majority of big listing platforms are owned by just a few large companies who buy up platforms to consolidate their chokehold on the market. They force you to play their game on their terms, which always results in you driving conversions at lower rates and higher costs.
Behind the scenes, this creates four structural risks:
Taking Back Your Freedom
Despite this, there are options to level the playing field. Properly leveraging real estate digital marketing services is how you take back your own data to drive more conversions, faster, at better rates, and, above all, at substantially lower costs.
Listing service giants don't want you to know what we are exposing because they know that if they lose access to your data, they lose. We’ve driven substantial success for over 1,500 multi-family communities and are bringing those same systems to the wider rentable real estate industry to give owners their data and their freedom back.
Kill the Middleman Tax: Stop Paying Ransoms for Your Own Data
We’re currently finalizing an exclusive webinar breaking down the exact system for real estate operators to:
The live session is dropping in a few weeks. Virtual seats will be strictly limited to ensure we can run a live, interactive Q&A.
Drop your email below to secure early-access registration before it opens to the public.
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