Delving into the ever changing travel experience

Transcript

Lauren Costello:Good afternoon, everybody, and I want to start by thanking CAPA for organizing this, and welcome to my panel here. We have Brad with Discover Puerto Rico, we have Vicki with Orlando International Airport, Matt with Spirit, and we have—

Matt Klein:DOHOP.

Lauren Costello:David with DOHOP. Welcome. Thank you all for being here. And really what we've seen lately is our airports, our alliances, our airlines, and our partners really have to work together as really we see the travel rebounding. And that's what we're going to talk about on this panel here. A lot of them have been stressed with staff schedule changes or airline schedule changes. So I want to talk about really from an APEX perspective, which really looks at the passenger, the Airline Passenger Experience Association. So first, want to look at a few challenges and what are some forward-looking solutions on those before we look even more forward-thinking. So the fact that we are here in Puerto Rico, Brad, maybe I'll start with you. We were chatting a little bit about the many challenges that Puerto Rico had, starting with Hurricane Maria, then you had an earthquake, and then you had COVID. Yeah. Saying goes, bad things happen in threes. So hopefully that's it. So just wanted to see how you were able to address those challenges, especially with now travel rebounding as this is Exhibit A, having this event in your great city.

Brad Dean:Definitely. Well, bienvenidos a Puerto Rico. This is a huge coup for Puerto Rico to be able to host CAPA, and big credit to our partners at the Puerto Rico Tourism Company for being such great hosts. And you know, we would like to think bad things happen in three, but even before all that, Puerto Rico had dealt with the Zika virus. We've forgotten about that, but Puerto Rico was just coming back from the Zika virus when Hurricanes Irma and Maria Yeah. And I think the first thing we found, and I've seen this in the 4 years that I've lived here, the people of Puerto Rico are amazingly resilient. And especially during times of crisis, there's a sense of unity and community that transcends politics and policy, and that just seems to happen instinctively. And I know in our organization, which is relatively new, we were created after Hurricane Maria to help rebuild the tourism industry. One of the things we hired for was people who had overcome adversity in their personal or professional life. We thought our biggest challenge was coming back from Hurricane Maria. Hurricane Maria.

Victoria Jaramillo:Hurricane Maria.

Brad Dean:We had no idea what was in store for us, and we found plenty of stories of people who had that. So I think there's, there's a natural sense of being able to not just be resilient, but to turn the negatives into positives and build back better, if you will. I think secondly, what we found here is that the collaboration between the public sector and the private sector was incredibly important, and you saw that particularly in airports and convention centers. The tourism company, Aerostar, our ports authority, as well as the private sector, making very Very quick measured investments, particularly on a prioritized basis to help the industry recover, especially during natural disasters. You just have to have that. And that's not important only for the quick recovery. It's also important for meeting planners and others who are looking at when can they come back. And, you know, that was— we probably sent more business to Florida and Georgia and the Carolinas that had planned for Puerto Rico than anybody could ever imagine, but we were able to recover quickly. And then I think the third thing was from a marketing standpoint, we really leaned into the research to tell us What are people looking for? What will they look for when they're measuring when they come back? And we focused a lot on our airline partners. Not hard to figure when you're marketing tourism in Puerto Rico. They're only coming 2 ways, by plane or by ship. And even the cruise lines are heavily dependent upon the airlines. So we really look to our partners in the airline industry and the research to guide us and help us shape the strategy. And as the governor mentioned earlier, Puerto Rico has seen record results, not only in visitation but in yield. And probably the most important statistic at all, today more than I think more than ever in our history, more people employed in leisure and hospitality. So Puerto Rico has proven that not only is it a resilient island, that this industry is resilient. You have the right people, the right strategies, you can come back quickly.

Lauren Costello:Excellent. Well, I think all of us will go home and share what a great time that we had. So even more travel headed this way. I want to go to David. Just as an introduction to our audience, you have DOHOP, enables airline-to-airline connections for interline there, and wanted to see how you were able to overcome some challenges at your company with all the operational challenges that the airlines were having with schedule changes, flight changes. If you can speak to how you were able to resolve some of those.

David Gunnarsson:Absolutely. So I think, you know, what we do is we enable these connections, right? So we— and we take care of the passenger. We take care of the passenger on a connecting journey. And we have, you know, given that, yes, we work with certain airlines, but we have the flexibility of how we reprotect or reaccommodate the passenger. of being able to put them on any kind of, you know, when we recover service, we can put them on any kind of journey or, you know, onward journey, whether it be transport, ground transport to a nearby airport and then a flight or anything like that. So we have, we have a little bit more flexibility than maybe— I guess we have more to play with than a single airline protecting a passenger like that. So that's been, you know, that kind of makes it a little bit easier, but still challenging.

Lauren Costello:Okay. Great. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about some of those other options besides just aircraft. Matt, maybe you can expand upon some issues or results from issues that you've done in that ways that Spirit has pivoted as a result of some challenges that you experienced lately.

Matt Klein:Yeah, sure. Well, when it comes to guest experience, that guest experience— and I know Vicki will probably want to comment on this at some point as well— but the guest experience definitely starts with, of course, buying, just buying overall. That's where DOHOP can come in to help create travel opportunities, but you start there. But really the guest experience is thought of, at least for us, when you get to the airport. And we want to have the best opportunity, the best opportunity for the best experience possible. It starts at the ticket counter if guests are checking bags. And we started this before COVID but really have started to accelerate it now, is thinking about how do we get guests through the lobby. And we now have a lot of self-bag drop technology that's being put in place. We We learned about that really by doing some fieldwork over in Europe and understanding where we're— especially in London where we saw some interesting things happening there. We brought it here. We talked earlier this morning a little bit about the biometric things we put in place. And that's really helped, I think, with getting the guests through and they understand the technology. And then we get to TSA. So then all of a sudden now we have to have a TSA discussion. And I think TSA is trying their best. Don't get me wrong, this isn't for lack of effort, but sometimes at some airports we have pinch points there. And what we have to do— I'll just take it to the airline side then for a second— is we have to think about our schedule design and how we schedule flights and what time of day are they at and making sure that as we maybe move some flights around to alleviate some stresses, are other airlines doing the same thing at the same time and we're just creating stresses again somewhere else because everyone's trying to adopt and adjust?

David Gunnarsson:Yeah.

Matt Klein:So these are the things that have come up through COVID, and these are the challenges that we're all, I think, working through with our airport partners as well, because everyone wants to have a good guest experience. It's not just the airline. Of course the airports want to as well.

Lauren Costello:And Vicki, maybe you can expand on that a little bit, talking about some of the agencies. I kind of see Orlando as the customer-centric capital of the world. You kind of have that focus there.

Victoria Jaramillo:Actually, leisure is our DNA, so we obviously have to do everything possible to make that experience as, you know, great as we can.

Brad Dean:But obviously there are times that it happens with the airlines where they have operations Mm-hmm.

Victoria Jaramillo:What we found with COVID is that when they were getting the stimulus checks, we got a lot of first-time travelers that had never, you know, they took advantage, they went on vacation to Orlando. So that brings a different set of challenges. You know, a lot of them don't have PreCheck, so you have the backups at the TSA. But one of the things that we implemented, we worked with the industrial engineers at both Disney and Universal. You know, if you've been to Disney or Universal, they have the FastPass. And so we were trying to do something like that similar. So we looked around, we actually have a pilot program going now with CLEAR. You don't have to be a member of CLEAR, but you can make reservations now to go through the TSA. So that has obviously helped somewhat. And part of it, they've expanded it. It used to be from 5:00 AM to 11:00. Now they're expanding it from 5:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Because one of our busiest times, pushback, is at 6 o'clock in the morning because you have 93 gates, a plane on every single one of them, 20 more planes behind them waiting to— for those planes to pull out. So our rush time is actually first thing in the morning. So those are some of the things we're doing. Thank you.

Brad Dean:Mm-hmm.

Victoria Jaramillo:Also, we're opening a new terminal and we're putting in the CrowdVision. It's actually LiDAR sensors and optical cameras that is real-time information right in the security area on TSA. So we can actually see and transmit that information, like, this line's too long, you need to move people. So that information, that technology is being implemented when we open the new terminal in September.

Lauren Costello:That's incredible. I'm excited to check that out. Well, looking, you know, we talked about some of the pain points. If we shift gears towards the future, Matt, Spirit announced the near completion of its Wi-Fi fleet. Spirit did win the APEX Award for Best Airport Innovation for your self-bag drop-off that you mentioned. Kind of what's next on your radar to invest in the guest?

Matt Klein:Well, I would tell you that a lot of what we're looking at right now is optimizing some of the newer technologies that we have put in place. It's expanding, it's expanding what we've already put in place And making sure like we get self-backdrop in more airports. And what's great is that when we have the relationships that we have with airports, airports are now coming to us and asking us, can we help them pilot through self-backdrop? Because they can see the benefits. The airports can see the benefits of that. And we're doing it even in— we're doing it in airports too. And we want to do it in airports too that have common use systems. Like, we're not— this is great for everybody. Fine. Like, this is great. So we should move that forward. I think another piece that when we think about investing in the guest, for us it's also making sure that all of our products are in front of the guests so they're aware. And merchandising opportunities, yes, they can drive more revenue, so of course I like that too, but I want to make sure that guests have the great— have a great experience as possible. So for example, with our Big Front Seat product and even extra legroom product, We want to make sure that if we have availability left right before departure, that we're getting that out in front of the guests. And that's— I know it sounds pretty simple, but we're trying to push that out now with— through our app adoption and making sure that we can get that in front of guests and just let them know, hey, Big Front Seat's available. By the way, your flight's 96% full and there's 2 seats in Big Front Seat available. Would you like to See that, see that opportunity. So, so for us, it's not just about Wi-Fi or things at the airport. Sometimes it's making sure our guests are really just perfectly educated on what's available to them as well.

Lauren Costello:No, that's huge. Why go through all the effort of creating this great program in your teams if it's not communicated out? Another source of communication is if there are any hurdles, or we've talked about cancellations, and that kind of goes to Brad, to you looking at DOHOP. You know, you really have a lot of these interesting pairings. You've done LATAM and Vueling, you've done IndiGo and Jetstar too. We saw that Star Alliance recently kind of previewed that they're going to work with Arrail. American Airlines now has 3 bus connections from Philadelphia, and you kind of were alluding to that a little bit earlier, but maybe you can speak about some of those kind of intermodal interlines that, that you are looking at. If we are going into the summer, going into weather, all those issues, how can you help the passenger if they have a cancellation?

David Gunnarsson:Absolutely. I think, well, I mean, it's, it's 2 things, right? So one is, is create, you know, creating and marketing those kinds of connections and making that a sort of viable alternative to, to a flight, you know, to 2 flights. Can it be a rail leg and a flight leg? And we have, you know, obviously in Florida we have Brightline coming up, which is going to be pretty interesting. I think it's going to be a viable alternative to, to, to a flight in some cases. And And we use this, so we do this already in Germany, for example, with EasyJet, which is obviously a significant low-cost carrier. They fly into Berlin and we pair them up with Deutsche Bahn journeys into sort of, let's call it, a 5-hour radius around Berlin, which creates a ton of new opportunities for travel. Not so much maybe for Germans, they understand, they know, right? But for inbound, if you're going to a kind of Mm-hmm. —secondary city, it makes for a pretty easy journey. And there's flexibility there as well that you don't have if you would book this separately. And you have sort of the added add-on of the protected connection where you can— we will take care of you if something happens. If your train is late and you miss your flight, I mean, usually if you do that separately, you don't get anything. But if you do that sort of— so we kind of pick that up. But we use any kind of, you know, alternatives when passengers is stuck at an airport due to a missed connection. I missed my connection on the way into the U.S., for example. I was due to arrive on Sunday night but ended up arriving on Monday around noon. And, you know, I did the same thing that we would have done for a passenger. I booked a hotel at Baltimore Airport and then I booked a flight the next morning. We might have rerouted them through Dulles if there hadn't been a flight out of BWI. But, you know, so We use everything at our disposal to take care of the passenger as well as possible.

Lauren Costello:That's great. A lot of opportunity.

Matt Klein:Lauren, I would just add to that with what Dave is talking about is when we have operational challenges, and every airline goes through them, we sometimes go through them as well, as everyone's probably aware. But the key is what do we learn from that? And for us, A big piece is making sure— and this is not new, but it'll be new for Spirit— it's making sure that when we have these disruptions, that guests know right away how we're going to take care of them. And we've been doing that for a while. And I think a panelist said it earlier today. What matters most is just being on time to get there, get there on time. And if we're not going to be able to do that, and especially if we're going to have an unfortunate cancellation, is making sure that we have the right options in front of the guests at the right time. And and we've put technology in place to try to handle some of this. Some of it's automated, some of it's not. But we we were the first airline to put in place you can use WhatsApp to get a hold of us. You can message us directly and we'll get back to you. And we can handle more of those messages in real time. And and that that's a great way to help get the guests. Granted, it's from a negative, but hopefully if we can handle them well in the negative, it's not you know as bad. And they remember the, the solution. So that's another piece of what we're trying to do there.

Lauren Costello:No, definitely. Um, and Vicki, want to give you the opportunity too since you mentioned Brightline and see if you wanted to speak to that a little bit.

Victoria Jaramillo:We're extremely excited because actually Orlando International Airport will be the first airport in the United States to actually have intercity rail system. So other airports like in Atlanta, you go downtown on MARTA, but that's where you go. For Orlando, you'll be able to go from MCO to The city centers of Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami. There'll be 18 trains a day in each direction. So if for some reason, which obviously in Florida we have afternoon thunderstorms and we have issues and there's irregular operations, it'll be another option to be able to book passengers to take that, that rail system. Now ideally it won't happen on day one when the new terminal opens in September, but say I'm in Palm Beach and I want to go to Iceland via MCO because Icelandair will be in our new terminal is to check my bag in at the West Palm Beach station, and next time I see it is in Iceland. So that transfer from air, you know, from the Brightline checking in and then going all the way through to Iceland. So that's the ideal travel that we'd like to have. That's the plan for that to happen. But again, it'll be the first one in the United States. We're very excited.

Lauren Costello:That is definitely exciting. And just one thing too, from an APEX perspective, and I know we're all looking at this like just The sustainability aspect of that too, to go those really, really short routes, do something like rail where you can have a lot of passengers. I think that that will be really attractive as well.

Victoria Jaramillo:It also gets people off the road too. So I think that's, you know, when you think about Florida population of 20 million people, it would be, and a lot of, you know, Orlando having 75 million visitors, and you want to get people, some of the people off the road if they're planning to go to South Florida as well.

Lauren Costello:Yeah, that's great. Brad, anything to add just in terms of, you know, how you're working with the airports and different vendors, transportation, things of that nature to kind of make that experience better?

Brad Dean:Yeah, I think from a destination standpoint, some of us have to be reminded occasionally, particularly on the marketing side, that it's that first impression. And what people are really looking for, to kind of dovetail on what Matt was saying, is number one, they want to be on time. But secondly, they want a smooth, seamless arrival. We just hosted what was the largest gathering of meeting planners in the history of Puerto Rico, Connect Marketplace. And, you know, hosting meeting planners It's like cooking dinner for chefs. They're going to spot everything. And it's amazing to me how much they focus on that arrival experience.

Victoria Jaramillo:Right.

Brad Dean:And it's not hard stuff, it's not difficult, but they want to know— certainly they want to be able to have the transfers, you know, working smoothly and efficiently. But what they really want to know is, are you going to get my attendees from that baggage claim to the hotel simply and quickly and predictably and with a reasonable level of service. And I think from the destination side, we've had to remind ourselves continually that airports and airlines are key partners, and oftentimes the first impression and maybe the lasting impression, especially when a meeting planner is bringing, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of business and thousands of visitors to your community, that's incredibly important. But the same principle holds true for every other traveler. So incredibly important to recognize that network on the front end will oftentimes drive the business Thank you.

Lauren Costello:Another category to talk about is kind of information sharing about passenger data. So kind of want to talk to each of you about how you walk that line. So David, for you, you're in that interesting middle spot kind of connecting people across there. You know, what kind of data steps do you take to make sure that that information is secure, and what steps do you take with the customer data to really advance the idea of interlining?

David Gunnarsson:Yeah, so I think, you know, So, well, we're, we're, you know, we're based in Iceland, right? The company's based in Iceland. So we're in Europe. So we sit under GDPR, which is, you know, there are complexities around that that have sort of come up over the past couple of years.

Victoria Jaramillo:We certainly—

David Gunnarsson:so, so there's 2 aspects to that. One is how we handle the data that is owned by the airlines, because we are there not as a third party owning the customer. In our model, the airlines on the journey still own the customer.

Victoria Jaramillo:Right.

David Gunnarsson:We own the portion of the data that is necessary to serve the kind of connection itself. So to provide any kind of service to the passenger if needed at the point of connection. So that's the— so we only— that's the only data we hold. But obviously there we have, you know, pretty significant agreements on data pieces with both airlines to make sure that sort of the legal position of us and the customer and the airlines are in the right place. I mean, this is, this is pretty complex, but it's all, you know, it's all doable. Just takes time.

Lauren Costello:Brad, maybe you can see how Discover Puerto Rico works to turn any kind of advertising leads into customers for the business of the entire territory. How do you accomplish that?

Brad Dean:Well, it's been particularly interesting, especially given the fact that Puerto Rico has come back through so many challenges. And when we began, we really had a bit of a new Yeah. Ironically, Puerto Rico's marketing for many years wasn't necessarily bad, it was just not consistent. And so we were constantly changing the theme and the brand positioning, even sometimes the logos and the representation. But what we found coming out of Hurricane Maria is generally most people knew Puerto Rico was an island in the Caribbean. They knew there was a relationship with the United States. Beyond that, there wasn't a lot more that they could identify. What you find in the marketing for the Caribbean, and some of you've probably seen this, it's it's what marketers call a sea of sameness. You can put all of the ads up for all the islands, and they all look the same. They all have beautiful beaches, and so do we. But telling the world we have beautiful beaches is like Las Vegas saying we have big casinos. That's not going to win today. So what we really had to do was begin to lean into the brand and differentiate the product and showcase what really separates Puerto. Puerto Rico, which is the rich, vibrant culture, the unique experiences like a rainforest, the bioluminescent bay, the longest zipline in the Western Hemisphere. And what we found when we started to do that was it opened us up to a new audience, and thankfully that new audience is starting to drive new air service, moving us into the Midwestern United States. So what we found first of all is recognizing where the brand is really differentiated—

Victoria Jaramillo:Sure.

Brad Dean:Really made a big difference. We've also found for us that it's It's hyper important to be super targeted. I think sometimes in the marketing world we want to get so focused on driving impressions and the traditional internal measurements. What we really focused on was making certain that we could drive impact. If I'm not filling airline seats, if I'm not filling hotel rooms, it doesn't matter how many impressions I'm driving. We really focused on the impact we're having on our partners because at the end of the day, that's really what's most important. And then we've also just trained ourselves to be extremely customer-centric. That's easy to say. It's not always easy to do. We just recently relaunched a brand positioning campaign. I think we did focus groups in, I think, 12 different cities, thousands of quantitative surveys. When we designed our website, we didn't just do surveys. We actually watched people use the website. It may be the single most boring exercise in the history of mankind to watch somebody use a website, but you want to know what are they looking for. Right. What aren't they looking at? What are they struggling with? So by being very customer-focused, really centering on the brand itself and differentiating the brand of Puerto Rico, what we found is not only are we able to drive increased visitation, we're opening ourselves up to an audience that wasn't necessarily considering us before. But you have to be willing to not be the same and try to be everything to everybody, and that's particularly important when you're a nonprofit organization publicly funded in the scrutiny and eye of the public, and oftentimes with stakeholders pulling you in different directions, it's incredibly relevant and important to differentiate yourself. You notice on the Orlando video, there's Universal Studios and there's Disney, but there's a lot of other elements to that, and that's a great example of the differentiation that that destination is striving for.

Lauren Costello:We were talking about that too, I think, from a nonprofit perspective. Totally understand. We have all the airlines are members and making sure that they're all seen and heard and recognized.

Brad Dean:So Of course, the airlines always agree, right?

Lauren Costello:Yeah, of course. Vicki, we've talked about how important the airport experience is. A lot of times it's just, okay, is it just a pass-through for passengers? And that's not really the case. What an impact it has on your experience coming into a destination for work or for leisure and then on your way home too. So what has Orlando Airport done to really learn who your passengers are and communicate to them without being overly really intrusive.

Victoria Jaramillo:So one of the things we are very good on social channels, and I would just say actually out of most of the airports in the United States, Orlando probably has one of the highest engagements on social media. So when we look at the demographics as who's following us, there's— it's 60% women. And when you look at it, there are a lot of the decision makers as far as travel. We also know the demographic from 35 to 44 is the lead group as far as that, and then followed by the 24 to 25 the 34 age group. But what's interesting to see is that it's not just U.S. We have a very large following from the U.S., but second, U.K., which is our largest overseas market, followed by Brazil, which is our largest South American market. So we are engaging not just with, you know, the U.S., it's really for with the whole world. And then Puerto Rico is actually number 4 because our largest Hispanic community in Central Florida is Puerto Rico. So there's a lot of going back and forth. So that's how we kind of hear from our social channels, you know, what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong. It seems that you hear more about what you're doing wrong, but we're always trying to make it better.

Lauren Costello:Absolutely.

Victoria Jaramillo:But then also separately, when we look at the— we can see the demographics of where people in Florida, in our catchment area, are traveling to, because I think the perception from a lot of airlines that I think Spirit's learned, they don't think people live in Orlando and that we ever travel. And so, you know, they just think that we go to the theme parks on the weekends and, you know, News alert, we actually like to go places and travel overseas as well. So we're actually able to see where these people are traveling to in order to target our advertising to them.

Lauren Costello:Excellent. Matt, wanted to talk to you about, you know, you made a major change— Spirit made a major change to your loyalty program. So just wanted to see if you can share how has that improved customer engagement? How has that changed the way you reach out to your customers, encourage them to travel Spirit more?

Matt Klein:If you can tell us how the outcome Well, part of that change was we were in need of a refresh of our product, our loyalty program I should say. We had a very— it looked almost like a legacy carrier program from 15 years ago because that's what it was. And we needed to change it to really be reflective of our business model, and that's what we did. So we now have different kinds of ways to earn, earn your points, including off of your ancillary purchases. And not just ancillary purchases like some other of our competitors may do, where, yeah, if you use the co-branded credit card, you get points. That's just because you're gonna get points from using your co-branded credit card. Ours is specific to any form of payment you want. If you purchase a Big Front Seat, you're gonna get additional loyalty points for that based on the price that you paid for the Big Front Seat or the bag or, or any of the products that we have. So for that, that was the reason why we did it. And the engagement is very high on, on that. It's hard for me to tell you specifically that it has driven specific incremental purchases because we went live with the loyalty program. COVID, things are strong in general. Engagement is strong in general. Our repeat rates Our loyalty rates are as high as— they were always high from a guest experience perspective. They're just as high now, and in some cases higher for us. So it's hard to say it's specifically the loyalty program by itself because we did a lot of things kind of at once. But what I can tell you is that we definitely get feedback that says, hey, I'm a Gold or I'm a Silver member, what do you think about this? So sending ideas into us, and that's engagement that we didn't have before. And I think it's because we've now figured out— and admittedly, other airlines have done this for a long time, and we're catching up— which is your best customers, your best guests, are going to give you great ideas from time to time. And we're seeing that now. So maybe that anecdote helps to feed how engagement has definitely gone up since the launch.

Lauren Costello:That's great. Communicating that out, right, what we were talking about earlier, and looking at points versus miles. I think it's really, really smart. Ricky and I were talking about pooling points and how important that is across even getting our hotel partners in the mix, or all of the other ride transportations— Uber, Lyft— doing all of that I think is really good and connects kind of that passenger experience too.

Matt Klein:A big piece of our loyalty program too is the incorporation of our subscription program. Used to be called the $9 Fare Club, now it's called the Savers Club. So Incorporating that and making sure that we're doing a good job with properly merchandising and timely marketing of our co-brand credit card with Bank of America, all of that are things that we also just have done a better job of doing. Now that the programs can run with synergies together, we have seen nice growth on our subscription program. There was issues there for a while because during COVID when people aren't flying, it's like, well, why should I still be a member of the program? I'm not flying anywhere. Or the fares were so low that you weren't getting any real value of the program. That's different now. And then we— and we've been— we've been testing and we do that a lot. We do a lot of testing online and we do a lot of testing of just determining what is the best way to merchandise and when to engage, and, and that has helped all the programs work, work better together.

Lauren Costello:Excellent. I have some more questions, so I want to see if there's any from the audience at this point. Okay, talking a little bit more about, about the airport check-in and kind of making that process a little bit more seamless, we were chatting a little bit earlier too about the engagement with the government agencies. And, you know, what kind of— what is the ideal situation and how you bring them involved too. Maybe I'll start, Brad. You know, kind of there's an additional security pain point when we leave Puerto Rico, have to go through the USC APHIS and just kind of check for those plant and health safety and security. So I was wondering if there's any collaboration that, you know, the airport or even the territory is doing with more enhanced TSA machines, is that can eventually be part of the screening process? You know, what kind of collaboration advancements would you look like— look to see to kind of get rid of that hurdle?

Brad Dean:Yeah, and for those of you who are in Puerto Rico for your first time, important to note when you go back to the airport to depart, run your bags through the USDA scanners before you get to the check-in counter. It'll save you the hassle of having to come back and do that. Hey, look, we all know this. This is a matter of policy over technology. technology. The technology's there between computed tomography, advanced— the advanced image scanning. The technology's long been available to be able to replace that. Nobody said this, but I'm going to make an educated, informed guess. I think the USDA likes having that. It's like a billboard, right, that says you're going to— you can't take this. That's what they're really trying to accomplish, in my opinion.

Matt Klein:Mm-hmm.

Brad Dean:And it's kind of like having the police officer on Did nothing happen while they were there, or did nothing happen because they were there? But the reality is the scanning technology is there. And we actually— we do hear some complaints from travelers who, particularly those that don't know about it, and they try to get through the process and then they find out they've got to go back and get their bags checked. If you know about it, it's really not that big of a hassle. Most meeting planners don't seem to be bothered by it. I'll tell you though, where it becomes a problem is for our airport. These little stickers they put on the bags, many of those end up in the TSA bag scan on the second round or on the floor in the restroom. So it becomes a cleaning maintenance issue. So to me, it's really just a clear question of, you know, policy over technology. And it really begs the bigger question is, are we going to, in the interest of traveler mobility, start to use the technology that's available to create a truly contactless travel process, which I think we all became much more familiar with the importance of that.

Lauren Costello:Right.

Brad Dean:during the pandemic. So it's a matter of really using technology and letting that drive progress without, you know, sacrificing health, safety, or any other important concerns. So the technology is there. It's really a matter of policy.

Lauren Costello:Okay. And I really would be in favor of that. Also work with, uh, the International Flight Services Association that does a lot of food and beverage, and working with the USDA. It's really getting to the passengers to let them know about those plant products or things like that that they can't bring on. And because there's So much, you know, safety concerns about agriculture and things like that in the U.S., we've had to incinerate a lot of international regulated garbage and waste. And it's just something that we're doing from that perspective too, is to really educate. It's not so much— it's very closed-loop cycle. You know, there's other ways to recycle without burning, and it's more letting the passengers know, you know, you can't bring this on board. That's maybe where there's some spread as opposed to—

Victoria Jaramillo:Yeah.

Lauren Costello:You know, something you had in flight, a meal that then was, was recycled at a catering facility.

David Gunnarsson:Exactly.

Lauren Costello:Any other comments? Okay. Going to Vicki, maybe, you know, talking a little bit about what some Orlando airports are doing in terms of security and working with some of the agencies we were chatting to. And maybe, Matt, you can have some input here too, just in terms of the airport and the airline working with the agencies, making sure that there's alignment for customs, that it's— there's staffing issues there, right?

Victoria Jaramillo:Yeah. Well, and I think every airport in the United States that has international service will tell you that they want more CBP officers. So what do you do to help that situation when you just don't have enough officers? So the airport years ago worked with CBP on a pilot program. We love those pilot programs, but we became the first airport in the United States to have the phased Phase 3 of the automatic kiosks. Other airports have done like the U.S., the U.S. citizens and the Canadians. MCO opted to do the international first. Why? Because our profile of our people coming in from overseas are more international than U.S. So we, we did that for the biometric entry and as well as the exit. So that's one of the things of trying to, you know, now you can board a 777 BA flight in about 20 minutes using that biometric So you don't have to show the thing anymore. It takes your picture. It's gone. The data is gone. So don't worry about that retention. So that's one of the things. We also have working relationship with both TSA and CBP, an innovation lab, as far as how can— how much more can we do on the technology side. Now, from what I understand from our IT folks, it was very quiet at first. One didn't want to talk about it, and they finally started opening up as far as some of the things that they are collaborating on to hopefully make that passenger experience better. And again, going back to the CBP though, I know that when we've talked with Spirit and other carriers is trying to go with a united voice to Washington to say we need more officers because again, it's that passenger experience. We want them to come in and not have to wait on a plane because the CBP is— you don't have enough officers.

Matt Klein:And so it is an ongoing issue at I 100% agree, and it's something that going to Washington and being able to have the discussion, the first step is acknowledging there's a discussion that's necessary. So we need that. That's starting to happen, I think. And the other piece is it's really, it's about economic growth here in the territory or in the United States mainland. You took a long flight in from Europe, and then we're going to make you stand in a line for an hour and a half. And it's like, well, no, I would rather those people be already enjoying their vacation in Orlando, for example. And the time spent in line is the time not enjoying the destination. And it's like the welcome to America kind of oh, never mind. Like hold on, you're not in America yet, right? So it's those kinds of things I think matter. I think they have a real Definitely.

Lauren Costello:And looking at different, you know, offerings, at least going in with, with CLEAR, with TSA PreCheck, all of those things, at least in the States, are really incredible. But of course, we're talking international destinations as well too, and how can, how can we make that process better? So maybe David too, for you, having experienced this, and you have kind of a unique viewpoint bridging both worlds, what are the advancements that you would want to see here? Yeah, I think, you know, an airport check-in and security that you could kind of see would be ideal coming from an international perspective?

David Gunnarsson:Right. I think, well, I was just— I always think about this when I come to the U.S. I travel kind of obviously a lot in Europe as well, Asia, you know, the big Hong Kong, Singapores, and the big connecting hubs there. I mean, it is a very different experience coming into the U.S., you know, landing in, you know, Baltimore or even JFK or wherever compared to, you know, Heathrow in London, which is a very large connecting hub, but it's incredibly efficient. You know, whether it is on the check-in side and, you know, boarding and all of those things, security, super efficient, or on the arrival side where you scan your passport, you know, yourself. You don't have to talk to anybody. I thought, though, I mean, I used to come into the U.S. and I had to fill out a form Right. That's gone. At least when I landed at BWI, that's pretty nice. And I didn't have to do it on a screen. I just— and actually my line was very short, but, you know, it was very late in the evening, so it was off-peak. You know, I think I kind of see a slow improvement, but it's still— it's very far off where I think it could be. And those are, I mean, obviously the points that we've talked about, right? Check-in, Security, boarding, arrivals. These are the friction points. And I think that's where, you know, employing any kind of technology that you can put in place, whether it's self-drop bags or all of these different things, those are the friction points that we're gonna have to work on removing and kind of to create this seamless experience. You know, where you board a train somewhere, leave your bag, and you seamless travel through the airport because you have your face, which you always have with you. Or you know your phone, and really put that to full use. I think that's going to be you know I would I would have loved to see that move faster during COVID but also understandably it couldn't.

Matt Klein:We we have just a real time issue is we've had to add in some cases at least thirty minutes and in some cases forty five minutes of minimum connect time for guests that are. international to domestic connections. And this is painful. And it's not just a revenue issue. It's— you can't get people to where they want to go. And, and we are a low-fare carrier. So we're offering the best fare, perhaps likely. And they can't necessarily take advantage of it anymore because the connection is only an hour and 20 minutes. And that should be enough time.

David Gunnarsson:Right.

Matt Klein:You know, and it's not anymore. And now it's an hour and 45 minutes or 2-hour minimum connect time. is just not the, not the right way to present ourselves, I think, to guests.

Lauren Costello:Definitely. And I think seeing from Asia and Europe, I know, Matt, that's where you look for the self-bag drop-off. And you're looking at the Asia airports, you know, they're doing things really, really well. The technology's there. Let's just challenge everybody in the room to bring it, to bring it here and work with those agencies to get things passed along a little bit more too. So Any other questions? Oh, was there one? No? Okay. If not, please join me in thanking the panel. Thank you, everybody.

Victoria Jaramillo:Thank you.

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