U.S. airlines have begun to implement unprecedented cuts in domestic flight capacity to combat high fuel prices and general economic turmoil. According to data released by the Official Airline Guide, to which all airlines report schedule changes, there will be 235,000 fewer flights and 19.9 million fewer available seats during 2008’s fourth quarter vs. the same period in 2007. OAG estimates 9 percent of overall domestic capacity will be cut this quarter.
While experts believe leisure and small destinations, some of which could lose all commercial airline service, will be hit hardest, even the nation’s largest airports will feel the effects. Statistics from the Boyd Group, an aviation consulting firm in Evergreen, Colo., paint a grim picture of a shrinking industry:
• Nearly 1.5 million fewer seats will be departing from Chicago’s Midway and O’Hare airports during the fourth quarter, vs. the same period a year ago, a 10 percent capacity reduction.
• Los Angeles will see a drop of more than one million seats, or 13 percent of capacity.
• Approximately 770,000 (11 percent) fewer seats will fly out of Phoenix.
• Air service in both Cincinnati and Oakland, Calif., will be slashed by about one-fifth, or close to half a million seats each.
• In Las Vegas, 8,700 fewer seats per day will leave McCarran International Airport. (The Boyd Group’s numbers include only domestic flights.)
Furthermore, the OAG report shows 38 small airports, most of which flew fewer than 70 commercial seats per day in November 2007, will lose all scheduled commercial flights by next month.
The reason for these cuts: Airlines are spending $20 billion more on fuel this year than last, $44.4 billion more than in 2000, according to David Castelveter, vice president of communications for the Washington, D.C.-based Air Transport Association of America. In a forecast released in early September, the Geneva-based International Air Transport Association warned that North American airlines are set to lose $5 billion in 2008. There also is broad speculation that more air carriers will fail, precipitating a major restructuring of the airline industry.
According to an
M&C Research survey of more than 250 planners conducted in June (see “
Handling Airline Woes,”
M&C, August), 84 percent of planners say airline capacity cuts either have altered, or are going to affect, their site-selection process.
“If that doesn’t constitute a crisis, I don’t know what might,” says Steven Hacker, president of the Dallas-based International Association of Exhibitions and Events, which has formed a task force to advise members on how to deal with the challenges of air transportation. “This industry is almost entirely dependent on a functioning, reasonably priced, safe, convenient air transportation system. That’s hardly how I would describe what’s going on now.”
The fallout
What does this mean for meetings? A lot depends on the
future price of oil and how quickly the U.S. economy can rebound.
Planners say they are more concerned about the overall price of travel
than airline capacity; however, fewer available seats could help drive
up fares in certain markets or force passengers to make cumbersome
connections where less expensive, nonstop flights previously existed.
Studies prepared for USA Today by FareCompare.com, Travelocity and
Harrell Associates, a New York City-based airfare and travel
benchmarking firm, indicate that domestic fares this summer increased
12 to 15 percent over last year.
Tim Sieber, vice president and
general manager of the Boyd Group, expects the meetings industry to
suffer in the near term because planners who booked meetings 18 months
ago or more were operating under the assumption of available air
capacity and affordability of their destinations -- and the landscape
has changed. “There’s a breaking point for everyone,” he says. “Just as
there was a breaking point for fuel for airlines, there’s a fare
breaking point for customers.”
About half of corporate travel
managers expect to send fewer employees to conventions, conferences and
trade shows as a way to deal with airfare increases, according to a
survey conducted this summer by the Alexandria, Va.-based National
Business Travel Association. “Business is still going to be conducted,”
says Bill Connors, executive director and COO of NBTA, but he admits:
“Cuts in capacity are not positive for the meetings industry, the hotel
industry or any of the hospitality industries. We’re hoping it’s a
short-lived phenomenon.”
According to M&C’s survey, nearly
half of planners say they are “very concerned” that capacity cuts will
make it harder for attendees to get to meetings.
Dan Lincoln,
president and CEO of the Cincinnati USA Convention and Visitors Bureau,
says conventions without continuing education or professional
certification programs are particularly vulnerable. “These will take
the first hit in terms of attendance,” he predicts.
A report
released this summer by Atlanta-based PKF Hospitality Research
demonstrates how lodging demand closely correlates with air capacity.
If air service dips 10 percent, overall lodging demand nationwide could
decline as much as 3.9 percent, the study found. Major cities such as
Orlando and Phoenix were singled out as the “most sensitive to changes
in air service” and might see above-average drops in occupancy.
Neysa
Silver, director of hotel consulting for Carlson Wagonlit Travel
Solutions Group, based in Minneapolis, warns planners not to expect
room rates to drop in concert with occupancy, at least initially. “A
lot of hotels are willing to compromise a small amount on occupancy to
maintain ADR [average daily rate],” she says.
That’s been the
dominant strategy throughout the first half of 2008: Smith Travel
Research, based in Hendersonville, Tenn., reported that while average
occupancy was down 2.6 percent through June, compared with the same
period last year, average daily rate actually increased 4.2 percent.
“It’s
not going to be a seller’s market,” says Robert Mandelbaum, director of
research information services for PKF Hospitality Research. But unless
occupancy drops dramatically, he notes, “it’s not absolutely a buyer’s
market, either.”
The consequences are beginning to extend beyond
attendance. In August, Colin Reed, chairman and CEO of Gaylord Hotels,
acknowledged that his properties were experiencing “higher than
historic attrition levels across the brand, which have affected
occupancy and will likely continue for the remainder of the year.”
Tourism-related
tax revenues are slipping in some destinations, notably Orlando, and
developers have postponed or backed off of plans to build new hotels,
meeting venues and airport expansions, even in Las Vegas.
CVBs react
Convention and visitor bureau executives largely downplay
the negative effect capacity cuts will have on their cities, while
acknowledging macroeconomic trends will reduce travel overall.
“We
really don’t anticipate large problems,” says Rick Hughes, president
and CEO of the Kansas City (Mo.) Convention and Visitors Association,
expressing a sentiment voiced by many CVB executives. Although Kansas
City is losing 19.4 percent capacity in the fourth quarter compared
with last year, as Hughes points out, the airport will have about the
same amount of service as it did in 2005, when airlift wasn’t a
concern. “People will still be able to get here,” he says.
Other
executives argue that flights being cut carried more leisure travelers
than meeting attendees, were not high-traffic flights to begin with, or
were just one or two of several connections to a given city. Those in
smaller markets say reaching their destinations already requires
connections, and thus cuts won’t be so noticeable.
But other CVB
chiefs disagree with this sunny outlook. Don Welsh, formerly of the
Seattle bureau and with Indianapolis as of Aug. 1, believes it will
take “a lot of creative collaboration” for cities to handle these
capacity cuts. This could take the form of the CVB giving incentives to
groups to help offset airfare, or working with the airlines directly to
lessen landing fees and operating costs.
Some CVBs are implementing just such plans to prevent a downturn in meetings business and attendance.
Chicago.
The Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau and strategic marketing
partner American Airlines announced in July they would offer airfare
discounts of up to 75 percent for groups of 10 or more traveling to
Chicago during the first quarter of the next three years. Other CCTB
members have devised group discounts, which include up to half off
published rental rates at McCormick Place West; up to half off hotel
room rates; and price breaks on ground transportation, event space at
the Museum of Contemporary Art and admission to city attractions.
“Despite
the current economic environment, made more challenging than ever by
record oil and jet fuel prices, American Airlines continues to embrace
key strategic marketing partnerships such as that with the Chicago
Convention and Tourism Bureau,” says a spokesperson for the CCTB.
Honolulu.
Of all major airports, Honolulu’s stands to take the hardest hit: 28.5
percent fewer seats will fly to Honolulu on domestic flights this
quarter, compared with a year earlier. That’s bad news for meetings and
convention business, which has been on the decline the past couple of
years. (See related story in Newsline.)
According to
statistics from Hawaii’s Department of Business, Economic Development
& Tourism, through July, the total number of visitors flying to
Hawaii for conventions, meetings or incentives was down 6.3 percent
compared with the same period a year earlier, despite the fact that
Hawaii has seen double-digit growth in business-related travel by
international visitors. The number traveling for corporate meetings was
off 22 percent compared with 2006, and last year, the number of
convention-goers arriving by air fell 30 percent compared with 2005.
Michael
Murray, vice president of sales and marketing for the Hawaii Visitors
and Convention Bureau, says the bureau is stepping up incentives for
planners to book in Hawaii. For associations looking to attract
attendees from Asia-Pacific, the bureau has an outreach program to
market meetings via its offices and contacts throughout Asia. Last
month, the bureau launched a new partnership with two Hawaii
associations representing retail merchants, recreational facilities and
tourist attractions to offer attendees discounts on everything from
shopping to snorkeling. Finally, the bureau is opening up its
multimillion-dollar flex fund to assist more groups. Previously, the
HVCB offered groups financial incentives if they brought multiple
meetings to Hawaii and met at the Hawaii Convention Center; now, groups
meeting at hotels and resorts can qualify as well. “Offsetting costs,
hopefully, will make us more appealing,” Murray says.
Las Vegas.
Once seemingly invincible, Las Vegas, too, will face significant cuts
this fall, losing 13.2 percent of its fourth-quarter departures and
11.4 percent of its seats. US Airways, second only to Southwest
Airlines as the largest carrier in Las Vegas, by the end of the year
will fly only 74 daily departures out of McCarran International
Airport, down from a high of 141 in September 2007. Most of the
eliminated flights will be during late-night hours.
Terry
Jicinsky, senior vice president of marketing for the Las Vegas
Convention and Visitors Authority, doesn’t shrug off these losses. “As
a community,” he says, “we are taking this issue very seriously.”
Jicinsky believes that “one of our biggest challenges will be to help
the meeting planner and the event producer to understand that while we
may have lost some direct flights, there still are a significant number
of options available through connecting flights.”
Orlando. The
average room rate for all Orlando-area hotels (excluding Disney World
properties) declined by 1.3 percent this past July -- the first time
that’s happened to all price classes of accommodation in the city since
October 2003. Furthermore, according to Boyd Group numbers, in the
fourth quarter of this year Orlando is losing 9.5 percent of its
flights and 4.3 percent of its seats as compared with the fourth
quarter of last year -- not quite the high percentages forecast this
summer (16.5 percent of flights and 13.5 percent of seats), but testing
nonetheless.
Gary Sain, president and CEO of the Orlando/Orange
County Convention & Visitors Bureau, says these cuts are “mostly
with regional jets serving tertiary cities with direct service, and
those direct services in many cases have been eliminated.” Sain, who
notes that “every destination is facing this -- some more than others,”
believes it will not affect Orlando as much as it might these tertiary
cities.
In response, a task force called Air Team Orlando was
formed this summer by major players in the city’s hospitality industry,
including the CVB. Sain says that, in the past, “destinations and
airlines have both been very successful,” and so strategic alliances
with the airlines were not necessary. Now, though, cities will need to
be proactive in lobbying the airlines for sufficient and affordable
airlift. That’s where Air Team Orlando comes in, with a mission to form
closer bonds with carriers.
Good old-fashioned marketing will
also play a role in ensuring that Orlando’s numbers do not dip as a
result of capacity cuts beginning this fall, which, Sain says, “is a
time period that could always use some additional marketing support.”
As such, this autumn the bureau will be putting a lot more “marketing
muscle” behind selling the city to the public.
What to do?
M&C’s
summer survey asked planners how they are protecting their
organizations against airline woes. The top strategies include avoiding
financially troubled carriers (46 percent) and meeting in hub cities
(42 percent). A third of planners already are holding more
videoconferences or webconferences, and 45 percent plan to be using the
technology more by next summer. Planners also said they are organizing
more drive-to meetings to avoid dependence on air travel (29 percent),
and they are negotiating meeting fares with multiple carriers for
future events (11 percent). Fourteen percent are canceling meetings.
Following are other strategies and advice from industry sources.
Renegotiate
rates. Catherine Mills, meeting services director for the American
Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, based in Chicago, is bringing her
group’s annual session to Honolulu next May. Mills says meeting
evaluations sent out after this year’s event in Washington, D.C.,
returned chilling results: Only four people said they were planning to
bring office staff to Hawaii, far less than is typical for the meeting.
“We’re definitely concerned,” she says. She expects attendance in
Hawaii to be off 25 percent from the 4,700 people who attended this year.
Although
her contract’s been signed for years, Mills is trying to renegotiate
hotel rates to keep the nightly price under $200. “Just seeing that two
instead of a one makes a big difference,” she says. She’s asking the
hotel to allow her housing bureau to take its fee out of the contracted
rate, instead of adding it on top. “We haven’t heard an answer on
that,” she says.
Planners can include in their hotel contracts
the right to renegotiate if room rates decline, although the existence
of the clause won’t necessarily compel hotels to budge on rates.
Rethink
attrition. Coffee Fest, which holds multiple conventions for the
specialty beverage industry each year, met in Hawaii for the first time
this past June. Show manager David Heilbrun expected 2,500 attendees,
not counting exhibitors, but the event attracted only 800 people,
making it the most poorly attended Coffee Fest in a decade. Heilbrun
calls the experience “mortifying.” He had to pay attrition “in the
mid-five figures” for not filling his room block at the 1,240-room
Hilton Waikoloa Village. “I had never paid attrition in 51 shows,” he
laments.
Planners who have enjoyed year-over-year growth at
their meetings for most of the decade will have to reexamine attrition
clauses to minimize risk, says Tony Wagner, vice president of meetings
and events for Minneapolis-based Carlson Wagonlit Travel. Planners will
want to renegotiate penalties, cut-off dates and rebooking options to
include the ability to apply cancellation fees to the new meetings,
Wagner advises.
In August, MeCo, the online meetings community,
announced that planners could post unused rooms on its website to give
others the chance to place last-minute meetings.
Reduce room
blocks. “If groups are coming from out of state, we do recommend they
drop room blocks accordingly to minimize attrition,” says Amita Patel,
director of sales for the Ontario (Calif.) Convention & Visitors
Bureau. (LA-Ontario International Airport, just two blocks from the
city’s convention center, is losing 28.3 percent of its seat capacity
this quarter compared with a year ago, mostly due to the demise of
ExpressJet.)
Patel says most groups meeting in Ontario are
California-based and aren’t worried about declining attendance, because
roughly 80 percent of attendees who fly into Ontario travel on
Southwest Airlines, which has not announced plans to cut flights to
Ontario from within California.
Avoid isolation. Laureen Rego,
event coordinator for Macquarie Securities USA in New York City, is
considering the Bahamas or Puerto Rico for a 1,300-person meeting but
says she’ll more than likely end up placing it in Miami, where she’s
confident that airlift will remain relatively steady throughout next
year. “I’m concerned about a shortage in the Caribbean,” she says.
Aside
from overall accessibility, Rego has another wrinkle to consider: Her
company has a strict policy about how many executives can travel
together on one flight, so she needs to pick destinations that not only
connect to a sufficient number of cities, but also have decent
frequency to those destinations.
“The economy is causing me to
look differently at cities,” echoes Jo Anne Mims, convention and
meetings manager for the Dallas-based Associated Locksmiths of America.
When her meeting rotates through the central region of the United
States in 2011, Mims expects to end up near Chicago, rather than in
Nashville or San Antonio, which round out the short list of possible
host cities. “My boss is leaning toward a suburb of Chicago,” she says,
“because of the greater population draw and two airport choices.”
Mims
has received some feedback from members who are having trouble finding
plane tickets to Myrtle Beach, S.C., to attend a small convention next
year. Myrtle Beach is losing 15.8 percent seat capacity, according to
OAG. Mims says she recently purchased her own one-stop ticket from
Dallas for $560. “It’s a little bit of a concern,” she acknowledges.
Step
up marketing. Some planners say they are dedicating more of their
budgets to marketing efforts, even for meetings in cities with strong
attendance records. Mims, for one, plans to increase marketing efforts
for her association’s next major convention, to be held in Las Vegas
next summer, despite the fact that attendance historically is 1,000
people higher in Las Vegas than any other destination.
“I just
spoke with my CVB rep [in Las Vegas],” Mims adds, “and he said, ‘The
party’s over in Vegas. We had so many years of such good numbers...but
the good ride is over for a while, for even us.’”
Charter
flights. Charter jets could offer some planners an efficient way to get
a critical mass of attendees to a more remote destination without the
hassle of commercial connections. The availability of regional jets
that commercial airlines have taken out of service makes the option
attractive, says IAEE’s Hacker. Six percent of those surveyed by
M&C are using private or charter aircraft for meetings.
Terry
Jicinsky of the Las Vegas CVA says the gaming mecca is preparing for an
upswing in chartered air travel. The city’s airport is running 15
percent less commercial capacity this quarter than a year ago.
“We’re
working with some of our hotel tour operators and charter carriers to
see if there’s a business model that works for us to put some charter
business back on the books for specific citywide conventions,” Jicinsky
says. “Over the last couple decades, charter passengers in some years
have been as high as 20 percent of our airline mix, and in other years
have been as low as 3 or 4 percent of our passenger mix. Right now
we’re at the low end of that scale, at about 5 percent. So history
tells us that we’ve got some opportunity there to increase that
percentage.”
Plan short-term. With cancellations more
common than they were just a few months ago, planners who shorten their
lead time might be able to take advantage of holes that open up at
hotels as a result, reports Tony Wagner of Carlson Wagonlit Travel.
PKF’s
Robert Mandelbaum is seeing the same trend in booking patterns. “Hotels
certainly are not as strong as they were in ‘04, ‘05 and ‘06,” he
notes. “There’s more leverage for the meeting planner but not an
imbalance toward the buyer’s side as we witnessed in ‘01 and ‘02.”