French correspondent Arnaud Leparmentier walked around the Dena’ina Center in downtown Anchorage Thursday while a few reporters checked in at a table to get press credentials. The center has become a makeshift press center for visiting journalists. Leparmentier loves Alaska but he said just getting here and finding a place to stay for the meeting was tricky.
“It was a mess,” Leparmentier said. “But I knew that it was a mess to find a hotel in Anchorage.”
Leparmentier is based in Washington, D.C., and writes for the French newspaper Le Monde. It’s his third time in Alaska.
“I was working to try to rent a car this morning, and I gave up finally,” he said.
Leparmentier said it was going to be $750 for three days.
Leparmentier is among hundreds of journalists and dignitaries from around the world who have descended on Anchorage this week for Friday’s summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The historic meeting lands in the height of Alaska's tourist season, making accommodations and transportation especially scarce.
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Michael Koziol is familiar with the challenge. He’s the North American correspondent for The Sydney Herald and The Age, two Australian newspapers.
“The flights were very difficult to find and expensive,” Koziol said. “Renting a car was – I was told there weren't any left, but managed to find one myself. And the hotel rooms, also pretty ‘exy.’”
‘Exy’ is Australian slang for expensive. Koziol got the last room at the Ramada downtown.
Most major downtown Anchorage hotels said Thursday that they were already at full capacity and were not hosting dignitaries for the summit.
Anchorage organizations are very aware of the shortage of places to stay and are working to help accommodate the influx, said Jack Bonney works for Visit Anchorage, a city-funded tourism group.
“It's tight, and so it's already a busy time of year, but we're going to make this happen,” Bonney said.
Bonney said this isn’t the first time Anchorage has had to stretch its capacity. He points to international events the city has hosted, like the 2015 GLACIER conference with former President Barack Obama and the 2001 Special Olympics Winter Games. Bonney said his group has been helping find hotel rooms and short-term rentals for people as rooms open up.
“The main thing is just really understanding, like, pack your patience,” he said. “There are going to be delays. Things are going to be tight, but we're also going to make this work as a community.”
When the hotels started filling up, the University of Alaska Anchorage stepped in to house U.S. and Russian diplomats. Bonney said that’s something the university does sometimes for academics or firefighters responding to wildfires.
Ryan Buchholdt, a vice chancellor at UAA, said staff have offered dorm rooms and even built temporary tents inside the Alaska Airlines Center to provide more beds.
“What we set up were essentially makeshift rooms using pipe and drapes, so very similar to (the) setup we would have for a trade show,” Buchholdt said. “But the ability to put in, I think we have two cots in each area, supplied by the Red Cross.”
He said that’s so members of the Russian delegation can sleep there and shower in the locker room next-door.
Altogether, Buchholdt said the university made space for about 750 people to stay on campus. University officials said a few hundred people were on campus by Thursday afternoon, with more still arriving.
Despite the extra effort it took to book travel to Anchorage, the journalists covering the meeting said they’re excited to be in Alaska for the momentous event. Koziol, the Australian correspondent, said he’ll publish multiple stories and hopes to give his readers some Alaska context.
“This (state) used to be Russian territory, way back in the day, so just trying to kind of weave all that together,” he said. “And then tomorrow we'll be very much focused on the meeting itself, a little bit of color around it. Hopefully, hopefully we get up nice and close to Trump and Putin.”
Koziol has been talking to Alaskans downtown to get a sense of their feelings about the summit.
And many reporters are in Alaska for the first time. Leonie Scheuble, a new U.S. correspondent for German weekly newsmagazine Stern, said it’s her first time reporting on such a big event.
“The whole world is going to watch what is happening here in Alaska,” Scheuble said. “And I think particularly for the people in Germany, they're really interested to see how Trump will talk after this meeting.”
Scheuble said she’ll be meeting up with some more German colleagues flying in for the event to figure out a reporting plan together.
