National Airlines chief calls for cooperation

Thursday, Feb. 10, 2000 | 10:59 a.m.

Airline executive Mike Conway says the good news is that with a little cooperation, the casino and airline industries could fill more hotel rooms and airplane seats in the future.

But the bad news, he said Wednesday, is that Las Vegas has had a history of a lack of cooperation.

Critics could easily point to Las Vegas' Millennium Celebration Dud of 2000 as an example of that lack of cooperation.

Conway, president of Las Vegas-based National Airlines, explained that the gaming industry would profit more if its businesses were to coordinate on special events and cooperate with each other on activities designed to bring more tourists to the area.

That type of coordination would pay off because airlines would be more likely to dedicate more seats to the Las Vegas market if the casino industry was more unified in its goals.

Conway was a panelist addressing how air service, conventions and tourism merge in a gaming destination at Bear Stearns & Co. Inc.'s American Gaming Lodging and Leisure Summit, which concludes today.

Conway explained that he founded National Airlines knowing that the gaming industry needed to extend its reach beyond the market west of the Mississippi River if it was going to continue to grow. He also knew that he needed casino partners to offer something unique to the traveler.

So National found its niche: Today, it serves New York, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, and Dallas to the east and San Francisco and Los Angeles to the west from McCarran International Airport. Conway said Wednesday that before the end of the year, National would branch out to Atlanta, Houston, Denver, Seattle and Newark, N.J.

Other airlines either followed National's lead or saw the same things Conway saw. Before National got off the ground, airlines had 55,000 seats a day coming into Las Vegas. Today, there are 66,000. Conway said National is responsible for about half of the new seats.

"The theory is that the farther you travel to get somewhere, the longer you stay and the longer you stay, the more you spend," Conway said.

That, he said, is why the resort and airline industries have to work together. Conway explained several ideas National is trying to coordinate with the resorts, the most important of which was to partner with two of them -- Harrah's and the Rio hotel-casinos. Harrah's Entertainment Inc., owner of both properties, is an investor in National.

Conway said National continues to offer baggage service directly from the check-in counter at the originating airport to the hotel lobbies. The airline's free stop-over in Las Vegas for passengers traveling between other cities on National's route has been a hit. Under the program, passengers travelling from Dallas to Los Angeles, for example, would stop for a change of planes in Las Vegas and could stay for as long they want.

Conway said he doesn't know what percentage of passengers takes advantage of the free stop-over, but he said a growing number of Dallas business travelers have taken advantage and combined a pleasure stop in Las Vegas with a business trip. He said Dallas is a particularly good market for the company because it competes with American Airlines, which traditionally offers higher fares than National.

Conway also chided American and United Airlines for their recent announcement about providing more leg room for their passengers. American is removing some seats and putting about 3 inches more room between rows in the coach cabin.

"We were thinking about taking out an ad," Conway said, "congratulating them for getting around to doing something we've been doing all along."

Other panelists offered their own observations about how gaming destinations and tourism operations mix.

Van Heffner, president and chief executive officer of the Nevada Resort Association, said Las Vegas has learned that it has to reinvent itself as the demographics of its target markets change.

He gave examples of how the popularity of slot machines has overwhelmed table games in the last 50 years. Today, slots produce most of a casino's revenue.

In the same way, he said, Las Vegas has reinvented itself as an entertainment and dining mecca in the 1990s. Today, five-star restaurants are part of the local scene and there are 16 self-contained restaurants alone in the Venetian hotel-casino.

Bruce Nourse, vice president of government affairs for Casino Magic on Mississippi's Gulf Coast, said that community has gotten Wall Street's attention by planning annual visits to analysts in New York to correct misconceptions about the industry in the South.

Nourse said the visits are made by teams of gaming industry representatives, bankers, government leaders and representatives of the area's airport commission to explain the amenities the region has.