Airport hopes video screens will ease security problems

By Liz Benston (contact)

Wednesday, March 10, 2004 | 11:06 a.m.

This summer, passengers at McCarran International Airport will be greeted by video screens near security checkpoints that will instruct them on how to get through security more quickly.

The screens, which could be the first of their kind for a U.S. airport, are part of a larger public relations campaign under development by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority in partnership with airport officials and the federal Transportation Security Administration.

"Passenger awareness, in our determination, has dropped," Clark County Aviation Director Randy Walker said at a monthly meeting of the tourism authority Tuesday at the Las Vegas Convention Center. "They're becoming less prepared as we get farther from 9-1-1."

For the city's casino industry, which generated more than $14 billion in gaming and non-gaming revenue in fiscal 2003, time is money.

Waiting in line for two hours at the airport can be a disappointing ending to a trip and may lead travelers to avoid Las Vegas, tourism authority spokesman Rob Powers said.

Las Vegas has the second highest number of passengers who make the airport their final destination, just behind Los Angeles International Airport, Walker said. That means many more people traveling through security at any one time than some larger airports in the United States, he said.

McCarran also was one of the first and fastest to rebound from the drop in traffic after Sept. 11, Walker said. The airport estimates it will host more than 37 million travelers this year, surpassing the boom year of 36.8 million travelers in 2000.

The quirks of Las Vegas' growing convention business are largely to blame for some of the worst airport delays in recent history, however, airport and tourism officials say.

About 130,000 people attended the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the highest attendance in recent years. Many convention-goers left the show at the same time, clogging the airport and complicating the screening process with laptops and other high-tech equipment, they say. The Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show last month sent some convention-goers home with ammunition that ended up setting off airport security detectors, they said.

The cost of the campaign, which hasn't yet been defined, would be borne by the tourism authority -- which is funded largely through hotel room taxes -- and by the airport.

The message to passengers is under development but may involve using a kind of signature character such as a "savvy traveler," Powers said.

Nancy McKinley, manager of consumer and industry affairs for the International Airline Passengers Association, says the campaign could be a positive public service.

"I have to agree that there are passengers who are not well informed," she said. "I think there are a lot of people who just don't travel enough to be familiar with changes that are happening in security."

The passengers association represents more than 400,000 business travelers worldwide.

In Las Vegas, education needs to start with convention managers, however, she said.

"Anybody in that business should be well informed about what you can and can't put in luggage and on the plane," she said. "You can inform the public all you want but if you have people handing that kind of stuff out, that would be counterproductive."

Besides the video screens at the airport, the campaign also will include paid advertising in media publications as well as a communications program with convention planners that will talk specifics about how not to send off attendees to the airport, Powers said.

"You have to be in people's faces," he said.

Some conventions have certain activities that may run afoul of security measures, he said. Gardening conventions may involve fertilizers that contain chemicals that can rub off on clothing or luggage, disrupting security detectors, for example, he said.

Airport studies have shown that reducing each passenger's security check-through time by just two seconds could cut wait times for passengers in line by more than half, airport spokeswoman Hilarie Grey said. Security screeners have helped the process by having passengers consolidate their belongings in bins or by instructing them to take off shoes before moving through security detectors, she said.

The airport is moving ahead with the campaign in spite of other moves to speed up passenger traffic at McCarran.

The Transportation Security Administration expects to add some 350 security screeners by summer and construction is underway on an expansion of the airport's security checkpoint area for C and D gates. By the end of the year, more checkpoints will be added on a second floor that now opens to a baggage claim area below.

Informing passengers should be a collective effort with the Transportation Security Administration, McKinley said.

"The TSA needs to be continually reinforcing the rules. Maybe there are some people who fly once a year and that may be to attend a convention in Las Vegas."

In other news, the board of directors of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority Tuesday approved a variety of expenses aimed at promoting Las Vegas.

The commitments included $700,000 to sponsor a Public Broadcasting Service television documentary on the history of Las Vegas to air alongside the city's centennial, $73,400 to host travel agents, convention planners and other clients at a party at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles and $255,000 to select Travel Pie, a Mexico City-based travel company, as the convention authority's Mexico representative through fiscal year 2005.

The three-hour PBS miniseries, part of the network's "American Experience" series, will air in October 2005 and is expected to reach more than 23 million viewers nationwide -- people who tend to be professionals and more frequent gamblers, PBS representatives said.

The tourism authority sponsorship will include a profit-sharing plan that is unusual for PBS. The authority will receive 10 percent of proceeds from the sale of home videos, DVDs, soundtracks and other items that will be created to accompany the miniseries.

At the board meeting, member and Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates objected to the invitation-only Playboy party, saying "I don't like it, I don't support it and I think it's a waste of money."

Gates and North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon cast the only "no" votes.

Terry Jicinsky, senior vice president of marketing for the tourism authority, said the event has prestige among the young set of clients the city is aiming to reach. Those clients represent existing business as well as potential new business for the city, he said.

Playboy readers tend to be young men with high disposable incomes, just the group the city wants to attract, said Manny Cortez, president and chief executive officer of the tourism authority.