The Great Visit Florida Beach Walk

The University of Florida’s Tourism Crisis Management Institute - Gainesville, Florida - www.hhp.ufl.edu/trsm/tcmi/home.php was the location of a Crisis Management Workshop on 19/20 October. Ian Henderson was a speaker at the Workshop covering his past experience in Northern Ireland and in other countries with TTC as a consultant.

Chris Thompson, President and CEO of Visit Florida was a keynote speaker. VF is a corporation part funded by the state. The crisis in everyone’s mind in Florida was the gulf oil spill and the serious negative impact that it had on Florida tourism even though many miles away. The Visit Florida story ranged from the establishment of a Florida Live website eleven days after the spill to show by a series of webcams on the beaches that no oil had reached their beaches www.visitflorida.com/floridalive . An interactive map facility allowed closer inspection of each county. Both Twitter and Facebook were used to convey the message. Visit Florida then received $12m dollars from the ‘BP Fund’ which enabled television advertising. The advertising focused on beaches, fishing and seafood and each ad ended with the link to the Florida Live website with the message ‘check it out yourself!’.

VF are now moving into the next Phases of recovery with Phase 1 commencing in November with the aim of Correcting Misconceptions. November 6 is ‘The Great Visit Florida Beach Walk’ where registered volunteers will walk and video record every one of Florida’s 825 miles of beach. This will happen in a major media glare and the results will be posted on-line. See www.visitflorida.com/beachwalk . The beachwalk is followed by a celebration of Florida Seafood in Washington DC on Capitol Hill.

Phase 2 of recovery begins in January with television advertising re-establishing the Florida Brand and subject to more BP Funding.

The other keynote was Lee Cockerell who had managed Disney World’s crisis management in Florida and was the first man to have ever closed the parks - in 2004 during the big hurricane season. As author of ‘Creating Magic - 10 common sense leadership strategies from a life at Disney’ - see www.leecockerell.com - he provided great insight into the absolute detail of planning for crises in Disney Parks and Resorts.

A range of other speakers completed the Workshop roster including Dr Peter Tarlow whose message was ‘if you are implementing your crisis management strategy then your risk management strategy has failed!’

Dr Dirk Glaesser – UNWTO’s Chief Risk & Crisis Management adviser spoke of TERN – the Tourism Emergency Response Network and highlighted the www.whatabout.travel website and its SOS planning function.

Lori Pennington Gray – Head of the Tourism Crisis Management Institute and her team detailed the Four R’s of Tourism Crisis Management – Reduction; Readiness; Response and Recovery – principles that can and do apply in almost every situation.

This was a hard working and well attended workshop with participants actively involved in destination management largely in Florida and surrounding states. Crisis Management is a serious business and sadly it achieves a higher profile month by month for a whole variety of natural and man-made reasons.

Reflections on a ‘Busman’s Holiday’!

Do tourism consultants ever take a holiday and simply not consider each destination and product they come across from a professional point of view? I suspect not! Here are some reflections from an Eastern Mediterranean cruise taken in July.

Rome – a first visit and quite challenging in temperature’s of over 40 degrees! Train fares from Civitavecchia to Rome are very cheap. The Metro system is less useful as there are only two lines. The queue or line to get into the Vatican Museum stretched two blocks at 9am. The trick is to book your tickets on-line in advance and you walk past them all and join the very short queue at prebooked tours entrance. http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MV_Home.html

On-line booking in advance is becoming essential at many European attractions. The Vatican Museum receives 4m visits per annum as does the Coliseum. A way to legally avoid the line there is to go to the Palatine Hill entrance a short distance away and the tickets there have joint access to it and the Coliseum. No line at all and then walk past the 2-3 hour queue and go into the prebooked entrance. Learn all this by studying guide books or websites such as http://www.cruisecritic.com owned by Trip Advisor.

Using the many firsthand accounts on Cruise Critic ‘boards’ you can find the answer to questions which first time and seasoned visitors ask about many destinations. How do I buy a ‘jeton’ to board a tram in Istanbul? Is it sensible to take the train from Naples to Pompeii and then go on to Sorrento? How do you avoid Turkish carpet sellers’ hard sell in Istanbul or Kusadasi? Should I ride the donkeys in Santorini or take the cable-car instead?

So what did impress the well travelled tourism consultant? Well perhaps the most astonishing ‘discovery’ was that of the island of Delos – a World Heritage Site. Reached only by ferry from Mykonos this island has been uninhabited since it was sacked by the Romans in 88 BC. The island was reputedly the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis and as the central island in the Cyclades became the centre of the Delian League. Nobody could be buried there or born there because of its sacred status. This makes current day archaeology totally focused on buildings and architecture. To us Delos had a Wow Factor! For a first timer it is essential to book a tour.

Negative impressions were best gained in Athens where the public sector workers at historic sites were on a half day’s strike about their pension cuts and the centre of the city seems to have been graffitied everywhere during the recent disturbances.

The Eastern Med is a fascinating place and possibly best avoided in the heat of July! What do you do however when your wife is a teacher??!!

Winning back the British Visitor – Back to the Future!

“Competitive holiday offers became more important for the British, and Southern Europe as an alternative destination was cheaper than the comparatively expensive Ireland........ The decrease in British visitors was not compensated for by the rapidly increasing but less numerous Continentals”

Sound familiar? Perhaps a commentary on the drop off in British visitors in the recently published ITIC report ‘A Changed World for Irish Tourism’ www.itic.ie or a quotation from a recent media interview given by a Bord Fáilte or Tourism Ireland executive?

No, but rather an analysis on the downturn in British visitors to Ireland between 1969 and 1972, when numbers of British visitors slumped by 20% following the outbreak of the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland. However, the author of the 1979 report[1] also draws attention to the declining competitiveness of the Irish product!

The rate of rapid growth from mainland Europe, the rate of decline of the British market and the more modest rate of growth in North Americans over the period 1965 to 1974 is eerily similar to the rate of change in visitor arrivals over the past decade. Of course the scale was quite different. In1974, for instance, just under 1.3 million overseas visitors came to Ireland - 820,000 from Britain, 252,000 from North America, 165,000 from mainland Europe and 28,000 from other areas. Last year Ireland welcome 6.5million visitors from overseas, of whom 2.9 million were holiday visitors.

Irish tourism has always leaned heavily on the large market next door, although over time the relative importance of the volume of British visitors has declined from two out of every three in 1974 to about one out of every two at present. However, the focus on regaining the top producing volume market was equally strong in the 1970s as it is today.

The author of the 1979 report concludes:

“The main problem of Irish tourism emerging from the statistics is the stagnation of overnight tourism since 1968 and the decrease in 1972. It is not only the Ulster crisis which is responsible for this development. Increasingly it was caused by the absence of British visitors.... Other likely factors for the decline include the weakness of the pound and keen price competition from less expensive Mediterranean holiday countries. The increasing number of Continentals, as well as the slightly increasing number of home holidaymakers, have not yet been able to catch up with the decrease in British visitors.”

So, does anything change? I hear you ask.

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[1] Geographical Aspects of Tourism in the Republic of Ireland, H.J.Plettner, Social Science Research Centre, University College Galway, 1979.

Travel recovery underway – experts agree at TTRA San Antonio, Tx

The 41^st Travel &Tourism Research Association Conference www.ttra.com took place just a few yards from The Alamo www.thealamo.org from 20^th to 22 June. The location - best associated with a Last Stand - did not reflect the mood of the conference and its wide range of expert speakers.

The big questions at the conference really were – Has the recovery in tourism begun yet? Will it be business as usual soon?

Speakers such as Duane Vinson of STR and Randy McCaslin of PKF Consulting provided firm evidence that in the USA at least and in the Far East/Pacific there was a first quarter 2010 resurgence in hotel occupancy rates and a recovery in revenues although the latter was not of the same scale. Forecasts by PKF which indicated that it would be at least 2014 before occupancy similar to 2008 are now being revised with a shortened timescale for recovery.

The presentations are available on

www.hotelnewsnow.com for STR and www.pkfc.com/presentations

Industry pundits such as Adam Sacks of Tourism Economics and Suzanne Cook of USTA both suggested that ‘yes’ things are on the up but unemployment remains an issue that may impact travel patterns for some time – as well as property prices and their dampening effect on the available spend of the older generation.

The recovery worldwide is not yet certain and the state of some European economies was clearly a concern. The strength of the US $ was impacting negatively on travel from Europe and UK into the USA.

This was a highly successful TTRA International Conference with a very thoughtful tone throughout.

San Antonio is a major conference city which in the past three years has seen fifty new hotels come on stream. The Alamo is clearly a marquee attraction with over 3m visitors per annum but perhaps the most engaging aspect of the city is the Riverwalk which is an outstanding piece of urban design and has provided a tourism heart to the city linking all the major hotels and providing a unique ambience. One and half miles of new Riverwalk have just been created linking into the Museum district. www.thesanantonioriverwalk.com/

TTRA’s next conference is its rescheduled Europe Conference now taking place in Budapest from 1-3 September. See www.ttra-europeconference.com and www.ttra-europe.org

TTRA followers will also be delighted to hear that the TTRA Europe Chapter won the Chapter Achievement Award for the first time!

Airlines and tourism turning the corner – but Europe lags behind

Latest tourist arrival figures to the UK shows an 11% decline for the month of April – when the skies were closed for 6 days. Arrivals for the first 4 months were 4% fewer compared to the same period a year ago, with a 7% drop in holiday visitors and a 3% increase in business – the latter sector was more impacted than other in 2009. The number of mainland Europeans (from EU15) visiting the UK in the year to April was 2% lower than a year ago.

The U.S. Department of Commerce projects international travel to the United States to return to a growth mode in 2010, with a 5% increase in the current year followed by growth of up to 7% p.a. over the next three years. This will mean that the US will offset the 5% decline in the number of arrivals in 2009 from the previous year – a record year for arrivals. However, earnings from tourism are estimated to have dropped by 15% in 2009. Interestingly, the highest growth in 2010 is forecast to come from Brazil, China, South Korea, Argentina and Australia.

Global airlines will turn a US$2.5 billion profit this year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a reversal from its March forecast of US$2.8 billion in losses. It would appear that airlines are benefitting from a strong rebound in traffic and yields, including recovery in business travel.

European airlines, however, are expected to still lose US$2.8 billion. European markets having fallen sharply last year, are now mired in slow recovering economies, government debt, a devalued euro, strikes, the impact of ash cloud closures and shaken consumer confidence.

Airlines are slow in replacing capacities cut last year to improve load factors and yields. A good example is the North Atlantic which sees a 2.4% increase in capacity this summer to an estimated 880,000 weekly one-way seats. Aircraft movements however are up just 0.5% suggesting the use of bigger aircraft, or airlines taking out some of their first or business class capacity and replacing it with more economy seats. Ireland is a marked exception this year with a 14% decrease in capacity. The top route between US and UK accounts for one in four transatlantic seats.

However, the customer is paying more. US carriers on transatlantic routes achieved a 23% better yield in April 2010 than a year earlier, the fifth straight month of increasing yields. Passenger fares for travel from the US in mid June are up to over 30% higher than at this time last year. For example recent fare comparisons (Expedia and TTC’s eFares) show that the best available fare from New York-London, $916 (up from $729 this time last year); Chicago-Paris, $1,543 ($809); Los Angeles-Frankfurt, $2,139 ($1,557). Fares to Ireland for travel over the same period this year (2009 in brackets) were New York to Dublin at $832 ($750) and Chicago to Dublin $1,259 ($828).

Cyprus First-time Tourist

The first ever Papal visit to Cyprus takes place from 4-6 June bringing hopefully some high profile positive publicity to the island, whose tourism arrivals fell by nearly 11% in 2009. 2010 had started brightly with a 5.6% increase in tourist arrivals in the first quarter but the ‘ash cloud’ caused a sharp reverse in April when arrivals fell by a disastrous 23% with the UK market seeing almost a 26% decline. Only the much smaller but growing Russian market saw a significant April increase.

Pope Benedict XVI’s visit is not without controversy as only 2% of the Republic’s population is Roman Catholic – most are Greek Orthodox. The invitation to visit came from Archbishop Chrysostomos11 – leader of Cyprus’s 800,000 Orthodox Christians although some other Orthodox leaders have condemned the visit.

This is a critical time for the island as once again talks between the North and South have reopened as of 26^th May under UN auspices at the Good Offices in the UN Protected Area (ex Nicosia Airport). UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the resumption of talks between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders and urged them to ‘be guided by the spirit of give-and-take in their negotiations’. http://www.uncyprustalks.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=2466

The Pope will celebrate Mass at Holy Cross Church www.lpj.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=467:a-la-rencontre-des-paroisses-de-chypre-leglise-de-la-sainte-croix-a-nicosie&catid=68:nouvelles&Itemid=85&lang=en at Paphos Gate in the UN Buffer Zone on 5^th June and will stay at the adjacent Franciscan convent which is also the Apostolic Nunciature – it is surrounded by the Turkish side of the Buffer Zone or ‘Green Line’ on three sides.

Is there a link from Ireland in all this? Ironically yes. The Nicosia Green Line is in UN Sector 2 in Cyprus which is currently the responsibility of a Territorial Army Signal Regiment from Belfast which is working alongside the Garda Siochana! They are responsible for Papal security while in the UN zone.

TTC has a long standing connection with Cyprus having worked on the Annan Peace Plan Tourism Impact, the National Tourism Strategy Review, the Free Famagusta (Ayia Napa / Protaras) Regional Tourism Strategy and issues related to air access to the island.

Ian Henderson has just returned from visiting the Buffer Zone.

Journey back to black still turbulent

Europe’s top 3 network airlines reported combined losses of over €2 billion this week. Hot on the heels of Air France-KLM reporting an operating loss of €1.285 billion (€3.5 million a day) for year ended March 31, 2010 almost double the loss a year earlier, BA this morning announced a record pre-tax loss of £531 million (approx. €610 million). These results do not take into account the impact of closures in April due to volcanic ash or in the case of BA losses as a result of cabin crew strikes in recent weeks.

Air France-KLM’s revenues for the year declined by 15% to €20.994 billion, while unit costs rose 4.9% or only 1% after stripping out currency fluctuations and fuel prices. Following the loss of traffic, particularly in the front of the plane, due to the global economic recession, the company said revenue trends were positive in both premium and economy cabins in the fourth quarter. The Franco-Dutch airline group scrapped its dividend after a year dominated by the global financial crisis and last June's Atlantic jet disaster.

BA’s pre-tax losses of £531 million, compared to a loss of £401 million a year earlier, came despite £1 billion in costs being stripped out comprising a £597 million reduction in fuel costs and a £390 million reduction in non-fuel costs. This shows the depth of the impact of the recession on BA’s traffic and revenue - passenger revenue for the year was down 10.9% to £7 billion, while yields fell 8%, despite signs of an upturn in the second half of the year. The carrier cut passenger capacity by almost 5%. Cargo revenues were down 18%, reflecting the fall-off in global trade and over capacity. BA reduced the payroll by just under 3,800 jobs within the year – more than 6,000 jobs have been cut at BA since September 2008.

BA as a long haul global carrier has been heavily dependent on high yield premium passenger traffic in first and business class – a strategy it continues to vigorously pursue with new upgraded fit-out and segment specific services such as the all premium London City-JFK service and its ‘OpenSkies’ Paris to New York & Washington DC services. There are positive signs that premium business travel is recovering although still far below its peak of a few years ago. According to IATA, demand for global premium travel finally returned to year on year growth in December 2009 some three months behind a pick up in general global economic activity. It was the first such increase in 18 months.

Lufthansa has reported a widening net loss of €298 million for the first three months of the year due to higher costs for fuel, strikes and bad weather, compared with a year-earlier loss of €267 million, even though revenue rose to €5.8 billion from €5 billion. The first-time consolidation of unprofitable Austrian Airlines and bmi helped Lufthansa increase first-quarter revenue but weighed on the company's operating profitability. The airline group had an operating loss of €330 million against a loss of €44 million in the equivalent January to March period in 2009.

A common thread in the statements from each airline is the need for continued cost reduction to achieve a restructuring of the business model for a global network carrier. This will be achieved by further cost reductions including increased productivity and headcount reductions; holding capacity or the number of seats on offer to better match demand to achieve higher load factor and yields; reducing short haul route flying. BA faces particular challenges with pending cabin crew strikes and the merger with Iberia. Lufthansa struggles with integrating and turning around its recent purchases – Austrian Airlines and bmi.

Irish carriers and services will not escape the impact of the difficulties of Europe’s largest airlines. In the short term fares can be expected to continue to creep up and we will be flying on fuller planes. The airline landscape will continue to change with most likely greater consolidation and an even more difficult time for smaller national carriers as competition with the ‘big boys’ increases.