The Lakefront Anchorage

The Hotel

The Lakefront Anchorage sits on the southern shore of Lake Hood, a 320-acre fresh-water lake immediately south of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. The hotel opened in 1975 as the Westmark Lakefront, joined the Millennium Hotels and Resorts group in 1998, and runs as the group's primary Alaska property. The setting is the property's first interesting asset: Lake Hood is the world's busiest seaplane base, with roughly 190 daily float-plane movements through the May to September summer peak and a permanent fleet of 300 aircraft moored along the shore. The view from a lake-side room is essentially a working float-plane airport at close range, and the lobby's enormous taxidermy collection (a polar bear, a Kodiak brown bear, a Dall sheep, and a moose, all genuine, all properly preserved) is the standard Alaska bush-flying lounge experience translated to a 248-room hotel.

Rooms run from 26 to 34 square metres in the standard categories, with king or two-queen layouts in a quietly traditional palette of warm wood, brown leather, and forest greens. The lake-side rooms (roughly forty percent of the inventory) carry the direct float-plane view; the courtyard rooms face a quiet planted side of the building. Suite categories step up through the Deluxe Lake View at 45 square metres to the Mt. McKinley Suite and the St. Elias Suite on the upper floors, each running 65 to 90 square metres with deeper lake frontage. Bathrooms are competent rather than indulgent.

Food and beverage runs through Fancy Moose Lounge, a casual all-day lakeside restaurant with a deck that hangs over the water and lets guests watch the float-plane traffic mid-meal; the Flying Machine Restaurant for the morning buffet and evening dining; and a small lobby cafe. The food is solid Alaskan tavern fare (halibut, salmon, reindeer sausage, bison burgers) rather than fine dining; the Fancy Moose deck at 9 pm with the midnight sun and the float-plane sequence overhead is the experience of the property.

The hotel runs a complimentary airport shuttle on a fifteen-minute interval, which is genuinely useful given that Ted Stevens Anchorage International is five minutes away. The property's private dock holds a single Cessna 206 for the in-house float-plane tour operator (Rust's Flying Service runs from the lot adjacent), and a guest who wants to add a bear-viewing day at Lake Clark or a glacier flightseeing afternoon can book directly from the concierge desk. The Lakefront is not a downtown property and not a wilderness lodge; it is the rare hotel in Anchorage that operates as a gateway between the city and the bush, which is exactly the right brief for a great many Alaska itineraries.

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