Here is What You Will Learn at the GCLA Spring Conference
With less than 2 weeks to go, 75% of the conference seats have been reserved. Many more operators are waiting to make sure their schedules permit the time away from businesses to attend. That said, we expect a full house at the FIRST business conference in the travel industry to be hosted LIVE in the state of California since the onset of Covid restrictions 365 days ago.
If you’re trying to weigh out your time and money investment, here is what your payoff is for attending:
1. A one-hour State of the Industry that will detail where the industry stands today and what is happening in real time in all areas of transportation.
2. Incentive / Business travel update on the return of our bread-and-butter revenue stream.
3. Meetings, conventions and live events “come-back” details from top experts.
4. Electric vehicles – a very interesting look into the not-too-distant future of luxury vehicles in California.
5. Luxury and Retail travel trends (including tours) – leisure and luxury travel is up this year so it’s time to chase that side of the business. Experts will tell you how to cash in.
6. Airport status in California – how Covid changes at airports from San Diego to SFO are affecting ground transportation, plus, we will cover what’s happening at small airports and private FOBs.
7. Weddings in California this year – a full report on how Covid has impacted wedding trends. There’s very good news for transportation professionals.
8. Insurance update – a detailed status of California transportation insurance and answers to your most pressing questions. You will also be able to talk one on one with our two insurance sponsors for more personalized questions.
9. Legislation – an update on all pertinent issues impacting ground transportation, presented by the GCLA lobbyist and attorney.
If you are not in the state of California, but farming out jobs to operators who reside in the state, your presence is necessary and we hope you come. California is the nation’s bellwether state on many levels, especially when it comes to travel and tourism trends.
Here is how your register:
www.gcla.show
www.gcla.org – click EVENTS tab
Email us at sara@gcla.org
Call us at 213-349-0190
And Now A Word from Our Airlines….
Just today, the CEO of Delta Air Line, Ed Bastian, gave his viewpoint on the return of flight. “In [my] 20 years dealing with crisis, business travel has always come back stronger than anticipated despite what critics say.” Delta’s president, Glen Hauenstein confirmed the worst is over and said the company believes the pandemic's impact on business travel would be behind them in two years or more. “With a slow and steady build in demand, we are restoring flying to meet our customers’ needs, while staying nimble with our capacity in light of COVID-19.”
Hauenstein concedes that, “While it may be two years or more until we see a normalized revenue environment, by restoring customer confidence in travel and building customer loyalty now, we are creating the foundation for sustainable future revenue growth.”
Let me repeat Mr. Hauenstein’ s key point here. We must RESTORE consumer confidence. But how? By working alongside the airline and hotel efforts. We must be singing from the same sheet of music and since we have a program that is earning praise from the White House to the School House, I urge you to do your research (www.SafeCleanRidecert.com). This is the only frontline training and testing program available to the transportation industry – including school, commuter, luxury, taxi, trucking, military/government, hospitality and corporate fleets. And, the GCLA recently endorsed it which is exciting news in and of itself.
Today I participated on a strategy panel with Scott Calhoun, P.E., PMP, USDOT Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Transportation, Dr. Jonathan Yoder, Lead of the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) team and COVID-19 Response at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (joined by his team) and two of the SafeCleanRide advisory panelists, Dr. Amesh Adalja, Ph.D., Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, Dr. Dennis Harp, Ph.D., Chief Scientist and Vice President of Food Safety and Quality Assurance. They are all extremely enthusiastic about SCR and its mission to help mitigate risks associated with infectious and contagious disease through education.
The objective of our meeting was to review the best path forward in getting the SafeCleanRide program adopted by states and within all markets. The great news for transportation – that includes YOU – is that this program exists. I am personally involved. From the inception of SCR in April, I worked with the Advisory panel and the training/testing company’s teams along with dozens of other health groups and focus groups to bring this program to life and deliver it to you. We now must educate our employees, our affiliates, our customers, our communities, our airports and municipalities. Importantly, I encourage you to expose SCR to your insurers since training and certificated testing programs can help lower business liability expenses.
The airlines and the hotels are making the same efforts here. They too are working on certificated program, albeit they are much more complex and thus taking much longer. That just means transportation is ahead of the curve and we will be that much more prepared as travel continues to come back. Delta's CEO Ed Bastian stated that, “Roughly 90% of its primary corporate customers have business travelers who are traveling in small numbers, but are getting their own sense for what the new travel experiences is." The recovery has begun.
Stay Safe,
Sara Eastwood Richardson
Airports and Branding - Are We Falling off the Radar?
Is Our Industry Falling Through the Cracks with Airport Branding?
FlyLAX.com has a beautiful website. There’s a nice tab called GROUND TRANSPORTATION INFORMATION. I clicked on it and here is what travelers see:
“There are several modes of ground transportation that operate at LAX to facilitate the movement of passengers and visitors to and from the airport.”
FlySFO.com is better. At least they actually include our niche on their site. Limos, alias chauffeured services, is bundled with taxi and ride-share under their GROUND TRANSPORTATION tab. However, there is only ONE “limo” company referred by SFO called or Sabet Transportation, better known as Teslaoncall.com. What’s that all about?
San.org, the international airport in San Diego forgot about us too but strangely, they didn’t leave out “walking or biking” under their TO and FROM options tab. Boo!
Making sure that this isn’t just a California thing, I checked out the busiest airport in the country – Atlanta. Much better. They do have a “limousine” exclusive tab. They do have a directory of services. However, the entire block of information is three sentences. I wish I could say the same for LaGuardia. If I had 3.50 reading glasses, I might be able to find a slight mention of chauffeured service, but since I don’t own a set of cheaters that powerful, I have to give New York’s main airport a fail on the industry’s exposure front.
This is an opportunity for our industry – especially now – to work closer with our airports. Help them recognize that our industry carries their First-Class passengers and that those people are major airline users and influencers. By leaving us out of their branding, they are shortchanging their client relationships with their top-tier travelers. At all touch points, our clients should be able to find us on signage, on apps, on websites. This is important. The squeaky wheel gets greased. Let’s take this slow period to do more marketing work with our airports. They need our services for their well-heeled travelers just as much as we need them.
Sara Eastwood-Richardson