Airline Problems Impact Hospitality Industry
Mary Bowling | 3 June 2008 |
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Our air travel system is badly flawed and it’s having a significant negative impact on the hospitality industry.
In a recent survey by the Travel Industry Association, Americans said they avoided more than 41 million plane trips over the past year because of dissatisfaction with the airlines. While our frustration with the air travel process cost the airlines more than $9,000,000,000 in revenue in the past 12 months, it also cost the hotel industry two thirds of that amount, a whopping $6,000,000,000 (yes, that’s 6 billion dollars!) and the restaurant industry lost about $3,000,000,000.
28% of the survey respondents said they avoided taking at least one plane trip over the past year-29 million leisure trips and 12 million business trips. This translates into 112,000 trips not taken each day, mostly due to delayed and cancelled flights and security screening inefficiencies.
While we believe that air travel is safe and convenient, about half of us also think the airlines are disrespectful of our time, that the problems with air travel are getting worse and that they are unlikely to improve in the near future.
In response to this information, TIA is asking major political candidates to address the issue and hosting a travel leader emergency summit in Washington DC next month.
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June 4th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
What do they think the politicians will do? Are they going to make us think that it is worth our time to wait in line all day, get strip searched just to find out our plane was canceled and they lost our luggage? Why don’t they find a way to lower the price of oil so traveling is more affordable or better yet find a new affordable energy source?