We at Excelsior Limousine loved this article by Ben Mutzabaugh at USA Today.
LAS VEGAS – Airport executives from across the world were here this week hoping to strike it big, not at gambling, but at speed dating.
No, the airport executives weren't in Las Vegas to meet a new spouse – but they were looking for new partners – as in airlines. And the effects from those Vegas speed dates could eventually be felt at an airport near you.
It's all part of the annual 19th annual World Routes conference, a forum that pairs airport and airline executives. The purpose? Airports get to make their case to airlines for why the airlines should add or expand flight offerings at their airports.
"The simple explanation is that it is a bit like speed dating," explains Nigel Mayes, Routes' Vice President – Commercial.
Routes' signature approach lets airline and airport officials schedule meetings in a series of rapid-fire, one-on-one sessions in which the airports can make their pitch for airline service.
"We have a clock that counts down and when it hits 20 minutes, time's up and they have to move on to their next meeting," Mayes says.
Mayes says Routes scheduled "around 8,000 one-to-one meetings" during three days of sessions that ended Tuesday.
But in typical Vegas style, the event was a spectacle in itself. Showgirls mixed with ballerinas representing Russian airports. Canadian Mounties crossed paths with Panamanian folk dancers in the exhibition halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center, located just off the famed strip.
Aviation and tourism officials from 140 nations were here for the event, representing 750 airports that run the gamut from behemoths like London Heathrow and Chicago O'Hare to small fries such as the tiny Ogdensburg International Airport near the Canadian border in upstate New York.
And for all of those airports, World Routes was a chance to shine – an opportunity to meet with more airline executives in 72 hours than they otherwise might meet in an entire year or more.
"There's an incredible mountain of efficiency," Mayes says.
For example, airlines reserving a single table for meetings were able to have their schedule planners meet with as many as 50 airports if they fully book their meeting slots, Mayes says.
"And that's just one table," Mayes says. That could mean "50 trips that (an airline) won't necessarily have to make" to meet with prospective airports.
Norwegian Air Shuttle, a European discount carrier that's growing at a breakneck pace, reserved three tables for this year's Routes.
"We have nearly 300 aircraft coming in the next 10 years," Thomas Ramdahl, Norwegian's Senior Vice President for Network and Scheduling. "So, we need to look forward on expanding – both European and long-haul routes," he adds during a short break between sessions with airports.
His advice for airports hoping to land the fast-growing carrier?
"Twenty minutes is a short time to present yourself. So it's important for the airports to be well prepared. "
California success story
One airport that successfully used Routes to win a spot in Norwegian's route network is California's Oakland International Airport. Norwegian announced just last month that it will begin flying from Oakland to both Oslo and Stockholm on the carrier's new Boeing 787 Dreamliners starting this May.
"That development in Oakland is huge for us," says John Albrecht, Oakland International's Aviation Marketing Manager. "There are many airports that would love to have that service."
He says Oakland's successful courting of Norwegian "had its origins at Routes," though he bristles just a bit at the speed-dating analogy.
"It's a little bit more sophisticated than speed dating," he says. "There's a lot of work that goes into it. We actually put a pretty good amount of analytical thought into proposing a market and what market we think is viable.".
To the point, Albrecht says Oakland made its first contact with Norwegian Air Shuttle nearly three years ago after the airline began looking at widebody planes that would allow it to add long-haul routes to destinations such as Asia or North America.
"Part of the sourcing we do really starts with the aircraft orders," Albrecht says. "Norwegian was a hugely successful company in Europe and when they placed the order for the aircraft, you look at the map and realize there's only so many places they're going to fly it to."
So Oakland and Norwegian first met at Routes in Berlin back in 2010, the beginning of three years of conversations that finally led to September's announcement that Norwegian's Dreamliners would soon by flying to Oakland.
A chance to fill in some gaps
Another airport looking to make a splash at this year's Routes was Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport, a big hit with attendees thanks to a top-end motorcycle from hometown company Harley Davidson on display in its booth. Milwaukee invited passers by to stop in and don a leather vest for a photo op atop the bike.
Milwaukee knows well what the payoff can be from a successful Routes conference. Low-cost carrier AirTran debuted at the airport in 2002, service that grew out of conversations that first began at a similar event called JumpStart that competes with Routes.
"They'll tell you the first meeting with Milwaukee at JumpStart is where the seed was first planted and that's where they decided to take a look at Milwaukee," says Pat Rowe, Mitchell's Airport Marketing and Public Relations Director. "And we ended up a couple of years later with AirTran service which then grew into an AirTran hub with a crew base."
That growth helped make Milwaukee one of the USA's fastest-growing airports in the late 2000s, though the AirTran hub eventually gave way following AirTran's acquisition by Southwest.
Today, Milwaukee finds itself in a solid position – Southwest has taken over as the airport's No. 1 carrier – but Rowe says the airport would like to replace nonstop routes to places like Pittsburgh and San Diego that have been lost in recent years.
"These things are long-building business relationships," Mitchell Airport Director Barry Bateman said from his airport's Routes booth about the airport's effort to plug the holes in its route map. "It doesn't happen quickly."
The efforts airports like Milwaukee and Oakland make at Routes also underscores how hard officials at most U.S. airports have to do to grow their flight schedules. It's not as simple as just asking an airline to come or to expanding its existing schedule.
"We get that kind of suggestion all the time," says Milwaukee's Rowe. "A lot of people actually think it's the airport that's in charge of that – that the airport simply needs to issue an invitation."
American debut
This year's marks a milestone for the World Routes event, which is being held in the United States for the first time in its 19-year history.
"The first one was in Abu Dhabi, and it was less than 100 people," Mayes says. "It was started up by some guys that were formerly from Manchester Airport. (They) recognized the difficulty in talking to airlines was that they couldn't actually get the opportunity to speak to airlines all in one place. So they started the event."
"Now we're now here in Las Vegas, and we've got 3,000" attendees, he adds.
The event flourished outside of the United States, but Routes hopes that moving the event to America – and Las Vegas in particular – will help expand the following Routes has cultivated during past two decades.
"Strategically, it was quite important for us because we hadn't been to the U.S. So there's 660 airports in the U.S. that have scheduled services, and we don't get all of those airports to attend our events" when they're overseas, Mayes says. "Having the event in the U.S. helped us to get more of the U.S. airports exposed to Routes and to see the value in route development."
He says 43 U.S. airports are making their first-ever appearance at this year's Routes, "which is great for us."
Mayes also notes the bid that Las Vegas put in to be the host city was a strong one.
"Las Vegas told us that it's a great convention city and that we would see our numbers 5% more than what we'd normally get because it's Las Vegas," Mayes said, adding they have in fact noticed "an increase in our core delegation this year."
And they'll get a chance for an encore next year, as 2014 Chicago give Routes a two-year run in the United States.
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