Foreign travelers take terror personally

Monday, Oct. 29, 2001 | 10:53 a.m.

For Ken Morimoto, getting Japan Airlines Flight 25 ready for departure last Tuesday morning was easy compared with preparing the airline's employees for the company's abrupt departure from the Las Vegas market that day.

Morimoto, the station manager for JAL at McCarran International Airport for nearly the entire three years the airline has been flying nonstop to Las Vegas from Tokyo, has been with the company since 1970.

He's seen the peaks and valleys of good and bad economic times and survived the cyclical changes of the aviation industry. But he's never seen anything like the abrupt drop in passenger traffic that occurred for JAL and other international air carriers after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Airline executives knew they had to react and have now officially suspended Las Vegas-Tokyo direct flights.

"Frankly, I'm surprised JAL held out for as long as it did," said Harry Kassap, manager of air service development at McCarran.

Morimoto confirmed what amazed observers have seen at McCarran -- that on some JAL flights from Tokyo since Sept. 11, 25 or 30 people have gotten off a jumbo jet that can hold 397 passengers.

Morimoto said he was proud that his company held out for as long as it did, even though it was losing money.

"It's a great company to work for," he said. "It just got to be time to stop the bleeding."

Morimoto said the airline has made it through the oil crisis, the Gulf War and the bad economic times.

But for him personally, this time was harder, because not only did he have to adjust, but he was the one who had to deliver the bad news to others. Morimoto gave the word on JAL's plans to cancel this week's Las Vegas flights to his three colleagues, to a contracted work force and to some of the McCarran officials who had courted JAL for nonstop flights from Asia for years.

"They're all very young people who have never seen this kind of a downturn," Morimoto said of the Las Vegas JAL staff, most of whom are being reassigned to other stations, at least temporarily, until a decision is made on the Las Vegas route.

Dave Christianson, an international tourism and convention expert at UNLV's College of Hotel Administration, said different nationalities with their different cultural values travel in different ways.

He said Japanese are extremely cautious and value safety and security more than most Americans. Europeans, he said, have witnessed acts of terrorism on their own soil and are more familiar with heightened security measures, so they haven't been dissuaded as much from traveling.

Canadians, he said, share many of the traits of most Americans, including the desire to take advantage of a bargain when they see it. They are also very conscientious of value and consider the exchange rate of their currency when making travel decisions.

"People generally are more fearful when dealing with international travel, Christianson said. "There's more anxiety going to a foreign place because it's far from home and there are a number of additional issues to deal with.

"Add to that the fact that the United States has always been considered one of the safest countries in the world. Now, we're at war and that will have an impact on people's thinking," he said.

The downturn in visits from Japan has affected several Las Vegas businesses.

Chris Himeno, who heads the Las Vegas office of the Japan Travel Bureau International, a travel agency that coordinates tour packages for Japanese tourists, said he expects the downturn from Japan to last at least two months.

"This is quite different from the Gulf War because the attack was so personal," Himeno said. "They (the Japanese) look at a plane hijacking as a terrible thing that could happen again and it scares them."

Himeno said the Japanese media coverage hasn't helped.

"They (media) have been exaggerating the problem," Himeno said, "both on the hijackings and on the anthrax scare."

Louise Faure, senior vice president of marketing for the San Remo hotel-casino, which has catered to Japanese customers in the past with one of the city's first sushi bars and gaming lessons in Japanese, said the property decided to develop other markets even before the recent downturn.

She said about 5 percent of the property's customers are Japanese and the company would expand efforts to fill rooms with domestic marketing.

Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM MIRAGE, said the downturn in the Japanese market hurts more than just the Las Vegas casinos.

He said Japanese tourists are frequent shoppers in the city's stores and are among the regular customers at many of the high-end restaurants.

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