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www.travelweekly.com
THE NATIONAL NEWSPAPER OF THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY
NOVEMBER 5, 2012
Hurricane Sandy takes toll on travel industry
Widespread disruptions put agents to work
locating and rebooking stranded travelers
By Kate Rice
Travel agents, some with the
winds of Hurricane Sandy howling around them, were rebooking
clients round the clock last week as
travelers strove to grab quickly disappearing seats to get home or out
of the path of the storm.
Some agents were working with clients
trying to escape Sandy; others were working
with travelers half a world away and hoping
to get home.
It was a time for the personal touch —
talking clients through their options — but
agents were also armed with technology built
in part for emergencies precisely like this, to
help them swiftly identify clients whose trav-
el plans would be disrupted by Sandy.
Airlines brace for revenue hit from Sandy;
New York expects quick rebound in travel
By Kate Rice and Danny King
Airports, cruise ports, subways, tunnels,
bridges and roads — high winds and an unprecedented storm surge shut them all down.
The tourism industry was continuing last
week to tally up the economic damages in
New York and beyond after Sandy, one of the
most devastating storms to hit the Northeast,
paid a visit.
The price tag: an estimated $50 billion in
damage and economic losses, according to
the risk consulting firm Eqecat. No small
sliver of that will fall on the airline industry,
for which the New York metro area is a major
source and destination market.
Bob Herbst, an independent aviation
consultant and retired pilot who spent 30
years flying for several major carriers, said
that American, United, Delta, JetBlue and
US Airways, which provide much of the lift
See SANDY on Page 62
to the region that Sandy tore through, likely
collectively lost an estimated $400 million in
revenue. He estimated that Sandy would hurt
their fourth-quarter profits by $100 million.
Darryl Jenkins, a consultant who is part
of the ACG Aviation Consulting Group, estimated that airlines lose $12,000 to $15,000
for every scheduled narrow-body flight that
doesn’t fly. The storm forced airlines to cancel nearly 20,000 flights, many of them high-revenue international flights serving East
Coast gateways.
However, airlines seemed to be ramping
up to speed quickly; all major New York-area
airports were back in operation Nov. 1, with
many airlines expecting to be at full capacity
by Nov. 3 at the latest.
By Nov. 1, airline cancellations had
dwindled from the thousands to 571,
according to the flight-tracking website
PLAYING to
ASiA
Cruise lines are
increasingly
looking to Asia
markets as their
next conquest.
BY TOM STIEGHORS T
Page 14
Social media 101, for travel agents
Social media has been with us for many years,
but many readers are still exploring the business opportunities offered by various social
platforms and working to transform a static
customer list into a vibrant, engaged client
community. To help travel agents fully exploit
their opportunities, Travel Weekly will be offering a series of instructional content and interactive events in the coming
months.
With this issue, we introduce the first of a series of columns by Carrie
Finley-Bajak, a consultant who combines her
feet-on-the-ground expertise in social media
with her many years of experience as a travel
agent to offer a unique perspective on ways to
apply these rapidly evolving technologies to the
agent channel.
In addition to her column, which will ap-
pear every six weeks on our editorial page,
Finley-Bajak will co-host a series of monthly
Twitter chats that will use the #TWchats
hashtag, led by Travel Weekly editors and fea-
turing key industry players as guests.
GOING SOCIAL
