Hawaiian Airlines, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and Allegiant Air have all announced that they will be reducing the number of seats that they have available to the Hawaiian Islands. All of these companies had rapidly expanded their flights to Hawaii in the past year, hoping to capture an increased market share, but now leaving with too high of a seat capacity. This move to reduce air seats to the islands have caused much concern for the Hawaii Tourism Authority and other tourism experts and officials. President and CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, Mike McCartney stated, “We need to pay very close attention to what’s going to happen over the summer and into the fall. There is concern to make sure that we continue the momentum that we achieved this last year. There’s no question we are concerned with the third and fourth quarters of this year, and we want to make sure that we can help facilitate the booking pace.”
When asked if this reduction in air seats would reduce the Hawaii Tourism Authority’s goals for visitor arrivals in 2013, McCartney added, “We need to make sure those seats coming to Hawaii continue to be filled, because in some markets there’s more seats than demand. We’re coming up with some programs to stimulate the market. We must remember we’re in a fragile and competitive world, and the health of airlines is very important to us. We need them to be profitable, too. We’re working with everyone to ensure that we can keep a healthy supply of seats to Hawaii and to do our job to drive demand in those markets. But this is part of what we saw coming: a flattening out. We have 954 flights per week from 53 cities that connect directly to the Hawaiian Islands from 20 different carriers, and there is no other place in the world that has that kind of access. It is very important strategically to Hawaii that we have this lift (number of seats) to make sure we continue to not only give business to tourism, but to give people in Hawaii access to the world.”
Bob McAdoo, an airline analyst with Imperial Capital investment bank commented, “There was a vacuum coming out of 2008 (following the shutdowns of Aloha and ATA airlines), and the airlines kept adding flights and finally got to the point where they were on top of each other, and that just doesn’t work. This (cutback by airlines) was not unexpected. It was something that Hawaiian had talked about last quarter. Alaska and Hawaiian were trying to compete against each other in the smaller California markets and realized they had too much capacity.”
Source: Honolulu Star Advertiser, 4-24-2013, www.staradvertiser.com
Posted by Jeff Uyemura-Reyes, Broker-in-Charge, Realtor®
Global Executive Realty, LLC
www.myhawaiihomesearch.com
www.myhawaiicondo.com
www.myhawaiidreamhome.com
Posted by Jeff Uyemura-Reyes, Broker-in-Charge, Realtor®
Global Executive Realty, LLC
www.myhawaiihomesearch.com
www.myhawaiicondo.com
www.myhawaiidreamhome.com
