When the conversation comes around to airlines, Brien Jones gets a bit grumpy. "It's a whole new ball game dealing with them, and a major concern for us," says Jones, who manages conferences, institutes, and business development for the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts (NACVA) in Salt Lake City. Among his gripes: fewer discounts, more airport delays, higher ticket costs, and diminished respect for his years as a loyal customer.
While it's of little comfort, Jones is hardly alone in the brave new world of planning air travel. The same post-9/11 reality checks affecting the NACVA have hit other meetings groups hard as well over the past year. And as airlines continue to struggle, bleeding cash and cutting back on flights and services, planners face ever-greater challenges navigating the increasingly uncertain skies.
Here are three trends that are sure to turn up the heat on meeting planning.
1. Less bargaining power; more delays
In the year since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there's no doubt that airlines have suffered tremendously. Grounding planes, canceling flights, struggling with security, losing billions, and hinting at - or actually filing for - bankruptcy are daily occurrences. The trickle-down effect: less clout for groups when it comes to negotiating business.
"Unequivocally, the toughest part of the meeting planner's job is going to get even tougher," says Kevin Iwamoto, president of the National Business Travel Association, based in Alexandria, VA. As one of the chief lobbyists for the business traveler, Iwamoto comes well versed in the travails of the airline industry. "Their situation bears heavily on the meeting equation," he says. "Chapter 11 may not mean closing up shop at an airline, but will they scale back so much that it will affect the meeting? Planners need to be thinking down the road if their airline will be viable when the meeting date comes around. Suddenly, having a backup transportation plan has almost become a necessity."
For Jones and the NACVA, plan B meant sitting down with smaller airlines after being snubbed by their major partner of four years. "We've traditionally been able to negotiate travel group discounts with this airline based on the destinations," says Jones. "When I called to discuss things with them this year, they didn't take any of our history and past relationship into account," he says. "It was just, 'We don't want to do this, here's your contract, sign it or don't.' " Adding to Jones' frustration was the fact that he was willing to guarantee seats. This time around he's considering smaller carriers - America West, Southwest, and a few others - with less convenient schedules and stops, he says, but a friendlier, more proactive attitude.
Another painful reality for planners is how airline cutbacks inevitably lead to more delays. "They're always an issue," says Morag Donald, product services director with Maritz Canada in Toronto. "Air is the first and last impression, and if meeting attendees have to change two or three times, and wait for connecting flights, then that will be the impression they recall." Typically, Donald does what most planners do: She advises her clients to show up early and be prepared for some delays.
2. More fees, and no-change low fares.
The newest, and perhaps most irritating challenge planners face stems from higher change fees and "use-it-or-lose-it" tickets - ultra-low fares often found on Internet sites that until recently could be rescheduled. Since late summer most major airlines have raised their change fees to $100, while adopting a no-change policy on super-discounted tickets, forcing planners and attendees (especially last-minute registrants) to rethink their purchase strategies.
"The biggest crowd affected is business flyers," and meetings attendees in particular, says Randy Petersen, editor of Inside Flyer magazine. The bigger point, he says, will not be the higher change fee but to charge to fly standby for an earlier flight. "If you get out early from the meeting, certainly it's to the airlines' advantage to get you when they can." It also puts a lot more pressure on planners to keep their schedules in line.
When Jones hires presenters for his meetings, the NACVA picks up the tab. "We're revamping the way we book speaker contracts, putting some of the burden on them in terms of canceling or making last-minute changes," he says. "Before they could switch to a red-eye or fly standby, but with the use-it-or-lose-it policy that airlines have adopted, that is not going to be the case."
On the flip side, the new fees and stringent no-change rules also have attendees rethinking their approach to meetings. "We're an association of educators, which means their budgets are tight to begin with," says Amanda Rushing, CMP, director of conventions and expositions for the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) in Alexandria, VA. The group's annual meeting averages around 4,500 people, she says, many of whom, given budget constraints, typically seek the least expensive fares. "When these principles are out of town, they have to hire additional staff to cover for them, and that costs money," says Rushing. "Now they have to make hard decisions about leaving the office for a meeting, period."
For some, however, the new use-it-or-lose-it rule is neither a surprise nor a big deal. "People are only ticked off because they've enjoyed these fares for so long," says Greg Lapin, meetings manager with American Osteopathic Association in Chicago. "If you don't use your box seats to a baseball game, they don't say 'sorry we missed you.' This only really affects those who wait until the last minute anyway."
3. You can't necessarily get there from here.
Given the past year's changes in flight scheduling, the hub-and-spoke system - where planes stop at the carrier's major hubs to discharge and pick up passengers - has some planners worried.
"Our 2003 meeting is in Anaheim, and I may lose a lot of East Coast members, because you can't get there unless you fly into a hub," says the NAESP's Rushing. With increased departure delays, she says, attendees now have to factor in missed connections and rescheduling to their trips. "These people need to know ahead of time whether it's better to fly through St. Louis, Dallas, or Chicago, or go direct to LAX and drive down," she says. In other words, yet another thing to consider before leaving the office.
That may be changing, though. American Airlines recently instituted a change in its hub system, which is designed to ease traffic flow and airport ground congestion. Smaller or regional carriers also offer a way around the hub factor. "We're point-to-point so we don't wait for a bank of flights to come in before we get you on your way," says Beth Harbin, a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines. "We focus on cities like Phoenix, L.A., Dallas, Houston, and Oakland, where we do have quite a few flights, but the scheduling is linear." Harbin adds that rather than opening up new destinations, the company is concentrating on improving traffic flow in existing markets by adding more direct and nonstop flights, "something planners would like," she says.