Saturday, April 11, 1998 | 2:05 a.m.
Talk to different East Coast travel agents about booking flights to Las Vegas and you'll get a different story with each call.
One agent will tell you how easy it is to book a tour, especially when it's done well in advance.
Others will tell you how disgusted they are with the lack of airline choices to Las Vegas and how they feel trapped by America West Airlines' emphasis on red-eye flights to McCarran International Airport.
Some will offer advice as to what Las Vegas can do to generate more tourist traffic to the Entertainment Capital of the World.
Travel agents, the in-the-trenches link between the leisure visitor and Las Vegas resorts, freely share anecdotes about getting from there to here. On Thursday, some of their stories may become testimony when Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., conducts a Senate Commerce Committee hearing at the Si Redd Room of the Thomas & Mack Center.
Bryan promised several months ago to establish a dialogue between the resort industry and the airlines to tackle the problem of filling Southern Nevada's growing room inventory while air traffic to McCarran is falling.
Bryan expects to spend about three hours Thursday listening to experts analyze why visitors aren't coming to Las Vegas as enthusiastically as they have in the past. The senator has invited comments from the gaming industry; the local business community; the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which markets the city; the airline industry; the U.S. Department of Transportation; and the airport.
The Clark County Department of Aviation reports traffic at McCarran is down 4.3 percent over last year's figures for the first two months of 1998.
Wall Street has taken notice of the decline, and analysts have concluded that airlines are shifting their aircraft to more profitable routes. Las Vegas, primarily a leisure travel market, attracts value-conscious passengers looking for deals.
Airlines can make greater profits from business travelers more concerned about getting to their destination at any price.
Phoenix-based America West Airlines, McCarran's No. 2 carrier by passenger volume and the airline that serves the most nonstop destinations from Las Vegas, has been cheered by its shareholders for pursuing that strategy.
At the same time, company officials emphasize they aren't abandoning Las Vegas. They're confident their passenger numbers will rise in May when a new flight schedule takes effect -- a schedule that will bring in red-eye passengers up to two hours earlier than it does now.
For the time being, America West's 1998 numbers for arriving and departing passengers at McCarran are down 14.3 percent from the previous year's level. Meanwhile, the number of seats coming into the airport for the airline was down 7.92 percent in March from that of the previous year.
America West executives have downplayed the analysts' opinions, saying Las Vegas suffers more from a demand problem than an aircraft-capacity problem. They say they cut some of their night flights because there weren't enough passengers to run the planes profitably.
In the markets in which the company cut flights, they compete with low-fare competitors that can match or undercut America West's red-eye fares with daylight trips.
Clark County Department of Aviation Director Randy Walker maintains that America West is half right -- there are two separate problems affecting passenger counts from the East Coast and the West Coast. To the east, Walker believes it's aircraft capacity. There aren't enough planes serving the city with nonstop flights. To the west, it's demand. Air fares have reached the point where it's more economical to drive than fly.
Critics also say low demand is a problem of America West's own making -- the airline has raised fares to a point at which leisure travelers are thinking twice about visiting.
But as some Las Vegans are inclined to forget, America West is in business to maximize profits for its shareholders -- not to help fill the city's hotel rooms. If it can do both at the same time, everybody's happy -- even the travel agents.
Through the varying stories the agents tell, they reach some common ground that give some insights into what's wrong with air service from the East Coast to Las Vegas:
* There aren't enough nonstop flights. The dominant carrier for the long-haul market, America West, puts more emphasis on its short-haul routes to the West Coast and to Phoenix than to the East. Of 75,605 seats available to Las Vegas on America West in March, 11,814 of them -- 15.6 percent -- are from the eastern markets of Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Newark, Washington, Orlando, Philadelphia and Miami.
According to the Sabre reservation system, only 21 of the more than 800 daily flights through McCarran last summer came nonstop from nine eastern gateway cities. Of those, 14 were red-eye flights that arrived after 10 p.m.
* There's not much competition. Other major long-haul carriers serving Las Vegas use a hub-and-spoke strategy similar to America West's. That means the majority of United's seats come from San Francisco or Denver, most of Northwest's are from Minneapolis or Detroit, Delta is heavy on flights from Salt Lake City and Atlanta, TWA dominates from St. Louis and USAirways flies most frequently from Pittsburgh and Charlotte, N.C.
* The cost of tickets has gone up. But that's not true in every market. And the "Southwest effect" skews the research on fares. Travel agents say ticket prices are up an average of 40 percent over last year. America West executives concur that the airline is profitable on its Las Vegas routes even though fewer people are flying here.
A year ago, the least expensive round-trip ticket to Washington, D.C., that a local travel agent could find cost $298. Today, it costs $375. The best ticket to Atlanta went for $210 in April 1997. Now the cost is $276.
But then there's the Southwest effect, a phenomenon the Dallas-based airline proudly takes credit for. When the discount carrier enters a market, air fares generally fall in that city. Part of the reason -- Southwest offers frequent sales, and competitors are compelled to match fares to keep their own customers.
Southwest figures it would rather fill its planes with lower-paying customers than let some of the seats go empty. The airline profits because it keeps its planes in the air more hours than other carriers with its short-hop route structure, and its policy of hustling planes in and out of its gates in a half hour or less.
This month, Southwest is offering a $98 fare on any flight. So, the least expensive round-trip ticket to Las Vegas from Tampa or Orlando, Fla., sells for $196. Last year, the cheapest seat went for $204 from Orlando and $228 from Tampa.
* Besides the number of flights remaining flat, the number of seats coming into McCarran from more than 500 miles away declined between August 1996 and August 1997. That means fewer long nonstops and more routes requiring stopovers and changes of planes that inconvenience travelers. In that 12-month span, the number of arriving seats for "stage lengths" of between 500 and 1,000 miles declined by 3.5 percent, and for those of between 1,000 and 1,500 miles, it fell 1.9 percent.
The number of seats coming from between 1,500 and 2,000 miles fell 2.1 percent and seats coming from more than 2,000 miles dropped 6.7 percent. Meanwhile, seats coming from less than 500 miles increased by 2.3 percent. The statistics reflect the dominant influence in Las Vegas of Southwest, America West's short-haul service and Shuttle by United, the low-fare stepchild of United Airlines.
In addition, Las Vegas itself is growing, and more business people must fly in and out of McCarran. Local travel agents say planes coming to Las Vegas have a higher percentage of seats filled. That's good news for the airlines, which make a science of projecting the perfect number of flights they can fill to at least 65 percent of capacity, the level at which most flights can operate profitably.
So what would the East Coast travel agents like to see in order to increase bookings? It's no surprise: more cheap seats.
"There are plenty of seats," Pat Baker of Travel by Design, a Baltimore agency, said. "But there aren't plenty of good-priced seats."
Baker said she's never had a problem finding a way into Las Vegas from Baltimore, but her clients demand low fares.
America West has nonstop service to Las Vegas from Baltimore-Washington International Airport, but Baker won't hesitate to put clients on other carriers that require a change of planes if the price is right. Baltimore is served by Southwest, and passengers can reach Las Vegas from there with one stop in Nashville, Tenn.
"Our clients are used to package deals where they can get their flight and their hotel for $300 to $400," Baker said. "When the air fare alone is over $400, they back off."
Elaine Ackerman, an agent with Caprice Travel Agency Inc. in New York City, relies almost exclusively on America West because of its nonstops from Newark, N.J., and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
"Most of the people I deal with are looking for package deals," Ackerman said. "Thank God I have no problems getting the seats."
But agent Beverly Burchard in Norwalk, Conn., who also serves on the board of directors of the Association of Retail Travel Agents, feels constrained by America West's timetable.
"There are fewer and fewer aircraft available and, consequently, fewer seats available," Burchard said, adding that her customers demand nonstop travel.
"Flying is not what it used to be," Burchard said. "It's not as fun anymore. It used to be an adventure to get in a plane and make connections in other cities, but now people just want to get there. As a result, there are some people who don't have any problem flying some of the so-called 'off brand' carriers."
Burchard also touched on an area Las Vegas casino operators are painfully aware of -- close-to-home competition.
"If the air fare gets too high to go to Las Vegas and our clients want to gamble, they'll go someplace closer," Burchard said. "We have a fabulous casino right here in Connecticut."
Victor Arevado, owner of Victor Travel Agency in Camden, N.J., said if his clients aren't satisfied with the air fare they're getting, they'll pull back and make plans to go to Atlantic City instead.
"I agree that there's not enough demand for more nonstop flights to Las Vegas," Arevado said. "But then, Atlantic City is only a 45-minute drive from Philadelphia. There has to be a real bargain to book to Las Vegas, maybe $299 round trip."
Steve Perry, vice president of marketing for the Association of Retail Travel Agents, headquartered in Lexington, Ky., said the spread of casino gaming throughout the United States has put a damper on the enthusiasm travelers have had for Las Vegas in the past.
But a recent trip he made to Las Vegas opened his eyes to what the city has to offer beyond gambling -- and he encouraged the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to step up its marketing efforts to tell that story.
"Most people have a casino within a short drive of their homes," Perry said. "So they ask themselves whether they would rather play four times a year near home or go once to Las Vegas.
"I think Las Vegas has to sell more than the gambling. They need to re-educate people on the East Coast about what Las Vegas has to offer. People don't know how close Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon are."
In addition to re-educating people with a stepped-up marketing program that goes beyond some of the traditional feeder markets it has pursued in the past, the LVCVA is finding it has to strategize beyond formulas that worked in the past. That's why there's an increased emphasis on selling the city as a convention destination and as an international gateway.
The LVCVA is in the midst of expanding the Convention Center. Other local properties -- the MGM, Riviera, Caesars Palace and the Rio among them -- have expanded or are expanding convention facilities. New properties Mandalay Bay and the Venetian are banking on conventions.
On the international front, the LVCVA, working with a group calling itself Las Vegas Parties, got a major shot in the arm last week with Northwest Airlines' announcement that it would begin nonstop service on June 1 between Tokyo's Narita International Airport and McCarran. Las Vegas Parties, which is represented by the LVCVA, McCarran, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, the Nevada Development Authority and the Nevada Resort Association, had worked with several air carriers for months attempting to get a nonstop route.
The Northwest route is a coup for Las Vegas because Narita is a hub for the carrier, meaning it is a gateway for several Southeast Asian cities. Tokyo is the largest overseas market for Las Vegas, and Japan is the second-largest international point of origination behind Canada.
McCarran already has several flights a day from Canada and Mexico. From Europe, there are nonstop flights from Germany and Brussels. Las Vegas Parties has been working with State Department officials to try to open the door to London, which is limited by the current bilateral agreement on air transportation with Great Britain. Last week, the announcement that the United States and France had completed negotiations on an open-skies agreement had local officials contemplating the prospects of service between Las Vegas and Paris.
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