Welcome to Travel Again presents the weekly travel Roundup, covering the headwinds and tailwinds impacting the business of travel. Please welcome our hosts, Mike McCormick and Ed Silver. Hello Mike, how you doing? Good, how are you doing today? I’m doing good. We are on episode six of season two. It’s crazy, we’re just rolling through this season. We are indeed.
Last couple episodes I’ve given an update on the Asheville area, so if it’s all good with you, I’ll just give a quick update on the conditions on the ground here in Asheville. Potable water or drinkable water is still probably the largest issue in the area, but fresh drinking water is available everywhere you go. It just isn’t coming out of your faucets, obviously, meaning you can get it from FEMA stations. There are volunteer areas where all you do is drive up and they put tons of gallons of water into your trunk and you drive away. Those FEMA stations, by the way, also have meal-ready plans, they have doctors on staff, and they have fresh showers for those who are struggling to shower in the water. So water is clearly still our biggest issue here in the area.
Restaurants are starting to open their limited hours, limited capacity, and obviously some of them have different menus because they don’t have fresh water and some of them do have fresh water, so it just depends. Some big news in the area is that Biltmore Estate, which is a major tourist attraction, did open this week. They’re a couple days into the opening. I haven’t heard any news about how that’s going, but they are on a well and so they have fresh drinking water on site. It’s really nice to have the Biltmore Estate opening back up.
Last but not least, there is some debate among tourism leaders here about whether it’s really too soon to ask people to come visit. In my opinion, I think it’s a little soon, but I know how desperate these businesses are to get visitors back in their stores and restaurants. So if you do plan on visiting, just set your expectations properly, tread lightly, tip generously, and remember many of these people just went through some pretty harrowing experiences. Tread lightly and be kind to everyone around. For those not in Western North Carolina that want to help, please do consider donating to the American Red Cross. It’s where we recommend that you funnel any help you want because that’ll also help people from the other hurricane. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s simply redcross.org and donate. That’s the update from the ground.
Thanks for that, and I think it’s good to keep everybody posted on the progress and the interesting balance with the tourism part. Certainly the Biltmore Estate opening is a really good bellwether for the beginning of a recovery effort, but it’s going to take some time. That’s great advice—if you do come, understand and be respectful of the situation and manage your expectations.
All right Mike, let’s get rolling with episode six. Onto the news. The first article I pulled—I think we both saw this around midnight last night—Boeing Union votes to end the strike. The machinists return to work after ratifying a contract with a 38% pay raise. That’s only 2% less than what they were looking for, and some other interesting tidbits there. We’ve been covering Boeing for a long time.
The strike had to get settled. It’s critical for the industry, critical for aircraft, and critical for the whole expansion, continued health, and growth of the industry replacing old aircraft. All the major airlines have their orders and they’re waiting. We need to produce quality aircraft. Boeing is a key part and kind of a bellwether for the overall economy here in the states. What more can you say? It had to get done, the deal had to get done, and I’m glad it did. Let’s move forward and get back to the real work at hand, which is producing high-quality, reliable aircraft and making the necessary changes within Boeing to ensure that happens.
I agree with all that. Good to see that end. The next one I pulled is an article from The Wall Street Journal: Tech Giants See AI Bets Starting to Pay Off. We’ve talked a lot about this on the podcast and obviously this has been news we’ve been tracking. Some of the world’s biggest tech companies showed this week how the tens of billions of dollars they have bet on the AI boom are starting to pay off. They also warned bigger investments are coming. If you can imagine bigger investments in this industry than what are happening right now, hold onto your hat because they are on the way.
Microsoft is talking orders of magnitude more on capital expenditure; they said they were spending basically 4X what they were previously spending in capex to invest in primarily AI development. That’s a huge expenditure. There are still questions about starting to pay off being one thing, but actually returning on that investment will be years off. For travel specifically, we know things are coming. We’re starting to see just the beginnings of the impact it can have on the whole travel booking and arranging process. It is really just a toe in the water right now for the industry. Most of what we are seeing is in enhanced connection with the customer or a little bit of service delivery taking out a pain point, but not the real type of overhaul that we see coming on the horizon.
We’ve started advising customers and clients on their AI game plan, which you really need to be thinking about not just for immediate, short-term incremental improvements, but really stepping back and taking a look at how to look at this longer term. How are you going to leverage investments made by some of the big companies and how does that get worked into your game plan? Very few companies have Microsoft, Google, or Apple-type budgets, so of course we’re going to follow their lead. But how you leverage that technology and those capabilities—being smart and being first—those are really important things to be thinking about. We’re going to continue to keep this high on our list of things that we’ll be watching for the industry. It’s going to get really interesting in the coming years and should have a pretty dramatic impact on travel distribution in general over time.
I agree on all that. I do hope to see more than just the big companies in the Magnificent Seven start to see ROI come together. I think that’s key to the next phase. I don’t think it’s a surprise that the large giants with cloud computing capability are starting to see those bets pay off as people pay for more AI capabilities, but for mid-sized and smaller firms, we need to see some ROI there as well. I think that’s what’s next.
Next article I pulled, partly because we were in Vegas together last week, is an interesting one: MGM Resorts sees healthy Vegas demand despite heatwave hit and F1 race slowdown. MGM Resorts sees strong demand at its Vegas resorts continuing through year-end despite some performance hiccups in July and a more muted interest in the Las Vegas Formula 1 race in November. CEO Bill Hornbuckle said Wednesday during an earnings call that July was pretty bad for the entire community including them, with eight days in a row of 120-degree heat compounded with a major highway being relatively closed for three days due to a truck rollover. The quarter got better as it went along. We were in Vegas and we did see some of the F1 Formula structures there.
This is one of those articles where on the surface when you read the headline you think it is just another report on earnings, but for us, it is the intersection of a lot of things. Vegas is a bellwether for leisure and it looks very healthy. We were out for the Money 20/20 conference on a whole different set of issues around payment and how potentially some legislative efforts could really derail our industry. Vegas made a big investment in having Formula 1 come to the city and do the race on a three-plus mile track literally through the city. They’ve got a 10-year deal with a three-year commitment and then a review and an out after that. We learned that from our cab driver, by the way, which we verified.
The fact is they have to build all this infrastructure to support it. It disrupts the locals because they have to build the track and the grandstands. But the other problem is that the expectation was to have this Formula 1 race crowd and draw in a whole new set of Vegas vacationers and visitors from overseas where Formula 1 is even more popular, creating a whole new category. The unintended consequence is that it has had an impact and softened some of the regular Vegas visitors because people think it will be too disruptive to maneuver while you’ve got all this disruption to traffic. So people were deferring going that might have gone otherwise, and they were basically just replacing old visitors with new visitors. Some of it is a little bit up in the air. We met with some Vegas officials while we were there and got some interesting takes on it. I think the overall is positive still, but there are some unintended consequences that people are still dealing with.
I am always amazed how much even people outside of our industry really follow tourism, particularly in Vegas because it is all about that. In most areas, you’re talking about tourism and the impact and how much of it drives the overall economy and commerce in general. We need to be really mindful of and protect our industry in that respect. We can’t take it for granted. We saw what happened during the pandemic and we’re finally back to a place where we’re healthy as an industry and an economy again. We’re always on the lookout for things that are going to have a negative impact, but there was a lot to unpack here. It was a really interesting story. If we need more advice on that, we’ll contact our cab driver and see what he has to say. He knew the scene.
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Next, please join me in welcoming Steve Sear, Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Distribution for Delta Air Lines. Steve leads the teams that oversee worldwide customer relationships and programs with corporations, travel management companies, distribution partners, and cargo logistics providers. Prior to his current role, Steve served as Delta’s President International where he was responsible for Asia-Pacific, Atlantic, and Latin regions as well as Delta’s global alliance strategy. Steve sits on the Board of Governors for Junior Achievement Worldwide and has served on boards for Virgin Atlantic Airways, United Way of Greater Atlanta, and DePaul University. He is a graduate of Leadership Atlanta and active at the GBTA.
Welcome Steve. Thanks for hosting me. You picked the slowest media day of the year: election day. We aim for it. Perfect timing as far as I’m concerned. Literally there’s nothing happening on the news whatsoever that’s of any interest at all until around seven o’clock tonight and then you tune in.
I loved your three stories. Congrats to Boeing; we desperately want and need them to be the best in the world at what they do. It’s great not only for our industry but for our country. On a personal note, the new CEO Kelly Ortberg is from Dubuque, where my dad is from, so there’s not a lot of people that can claim those Dubuque roots. AI obviously will be the talk forever and we’ll touch on that. Vegas is a bellwether for leisure but it’s also a bellwether for business. Business on the hybrid—the corporate travelers that are not flying on their corporate designators when they’re in leisure—that’s close to 200% recovered. They’re going to places like Vegas and bringing their spouses and families. That’s a really good segment for us. To tell you how different things are, our CEO will be the kickoff keynote speaker at the Sphere for the CES show in January. There might be some funny-looking Delta things on the Sphere. That would be awesome. We got a taste of the Sphere while we were there; it was very cool.
One thing before we get started: I see you’re on the Board of Junior Achievement. I won “Best Salesman of the Year” of Junior Achievement when I was in 10th grade. I am heading to London tomorrow night for the board meeting over there. It’s a great organization and fits right into what I like personally, which is a focus on education and kids, and it fits into Delta’s core pillars as well. It fits on a global scale. We’ve got 31 different chapters that Delta supports around the world. I really enjoyed it. It was great for teamwork and being able to meet a whole range of kids. You’ve got to put that trophy up. I still have it, I’ll dig it out.
We know each other from way back. Your start with Delta actually was through Northwest because you were part of the Northwest family and a key part of the whole integration team. When you were going through those couple years of integration, it was no easy feat. To your credit and both organizations’ credit, you really set the bar for how that kind of mega integration needed to get done. You ended up taking the best of both. Mergers and integrations are hard, but as you reflect back, was this the vision? Is it realized? Delta is the market leader now.
It’s some sort of combination of elation and PTSD reflecting back. I joined this industry after grad school because it’s global, competitive, and complex, and it has exceeded every expectation from that dynamic. I did bankruptcy consulting prior to grad school so I thought that would be my scope in life; little did I know I’d be on the commercial side for most of it. I love every single second of it.
For the merger, we set out wanting to be the U.S. leading airline, leveraging our people. I think that’s one of the key things that Delta brought. When we executed it, it came down to the people. When you have a service DNA combined with one of the most important things we did—putting the profit-sharing program in place—it became really powerful. It was industry-first and industry-leading, still probably the world’s best profit-sharing program from any industry. The people actually made it happen. We all were heads down because it was at the time the biggest merger in the U.S. airline industry and one of the biggest in the world. It was “hey guys, don’t get distracted, stay focused and execute.”
To everybody’s credit, that happened. When you take care of your people, they take care of your customers, which in essence takes care of your stakeholders. We were able to get through it. We never take it for granted; it was super hard. It was a big journey. I likened it to three pillars. First, on operational reliability, Delta and Northwest were at or near the bottom. We did not run a very good operation and we needed to fix that. That was mission first, of course after safety. We have to run a good airline because that builds trust and consistency. When you do that, everything else starts to work commercially. You have to run a great operation. All of our corporate agreements have an operational performance guarantee that we’re going to outperform our two biggest competitors here in the U.S. We never have to even worry about it; the distance is so great. We even gave corporate partners tools that let them track if they had chosen another carrier how many tens of thousands of additional delays, cancellations, extra costs, and traveler friction would occur in that environment. It’s something we’re still super proud of and you can always count on us to be at the top.
The second pillar is about our network. When we put our two hub networks together, we were a little thin in some of the big coastal business markets and we didn’t really have a presence in London. When we started to build out New York, Boston, L.A., and Seattle, all of a sudden we had big business centers that were gateways to international travel that complemented strong hubs in Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, and Detroit. We ended up with a really robust domestic network complemented over time with making purchases in Virgin to get access to London Heathrow slots, efforts with Aeromexico putting us squarely in Mexico City as a hub, and even more recently LATAM, the biggest carrier in South America. Incheon with Korean is the best connecting complex in all of Asia. All of a sudden we had a domestic network that we had to redesign versus just putting it together, and we built out our partner networks to provide that global reach.
Taking the ownership stake in your partners, even minority stakes, was really smart. Having a stake in the game with them is deeper than alliances. If you’re really relying on that consistency through the entire network, ownership helps a lot because you’re at the board level. Some of the first projects were “seams reduction,” blocking and tackling. We laid out a big grid of 50 must-haves for a partnership—everything from booking and seat access to making sure everything aligned. On a bigger note, it’s about getting the same or similar products on aircraft, like business class, Delta Premium Select, Comfort Plus, and the main cabin. As we align around that, it’s making the experience for our heavy business travelers more consistent when they’re traveling around the globe. Those are long-term projects and decisions when you’re talking about aircraft and configuration. Getting that early and consistent has helped us.
Under your umbrella is the pricing strategy. We talk a lot about NDC and the future of dynamic offers and pricing. Delta was more patient, while in the earlier part there might have been some frustration that Delta was late to the game. As it turned out, given Americans retrenching, “slow and steady wins the race” was a very wise approach. Where do you see that all going? From an observer’s perspective, we see the promise of it, but what it takes to get there and for it to finally benefit a customer is a tough one.
It’s not like it’s a project; Edifact wasn’t created in a day. I liken it back to our approach that we’ve taken since the merger: Listen, Act, Listen. When we merged our companies in the sales and distribution area, we took the best of both, which was very hard. We ended up with an A-team, but then we focused on the customer. We don’t get to tell the customer what to do. We’ve got to find what they need and want that they value, and they value service. That’s why we have the best global sales support in the world. They value having a sales rep with them able to hear and understand the contract and needs they have.
That puts us in a position where, when we see what is the biggest system change in the industry, we have to take the same approach. We listen, act, and listen. We get all the stakeholders involved—the TMCs, the ITs, and IATA—and we work with the corporate agencies and GDSs to say, “how are we going to ultimately build something that’s going to be valued and consumed by our customers?” We’re going to make sure it can be serviced; that’s the key piece. We sell pretty well in EDIFACT, but servicing is going to be a benefit across all channels. Our distribution strategy is simple: meet the customer in their channel of choice. We’re not going to tell them where to go, but we’re going to have the best channel for them to choose from. We want to make sure what you experience on delta.com and what you experience in the GDS, OBT, or TMC display is going to look and feel similar. It can’t be perfect, but we’re far enough along with technology and approach that we can make that happen. Arguably some people said we’re slow, but we’re just going to make sure it works.
“Working” would be a good bar to reach. Some other initiatives just didn’t include service as part of that standard bar. It is interesting because NDC should be able to go way beyond that level. I know you’re talking about meeting people where they are with functionality that’s at least at a base level. When will travelers start to see those personalized offers, dynamic offers, and bundles?
We’re nowhere near that from a customer perspective. People are testing it in very minor ways around the world, but those percentages are in the low single digits. That’s okay because as people are testing, they’re realizing some things just don’t work. At Investor Day in a few weeks, we’ll lay out more clearly what we envision our next generation of pricing looking like. I don’t see us in that space materially until probably toward the end of ’25, when we can begin to get a little bit more testing in place and making sure it can be served—not just for third-party NDC but also for delta.com and the app. We want it to be consistent so we’re not scrambling to service something that we put out there. It’s going to be a journey, but we like what we’re hearing from our partners.
We met with Steve Singh talking about his vision for the “Perfect Trip,” and I think that’s great. With Investor Day coming, we’ll be watching because Delta is in a great position to offer leadership and guidance that the industry can follow. Everybody needs to have a common vision. Think about data—that was one of the first things. The data was a disaster and everybody was talking past each other. We focused not just on trying to standardize it but also on making it accessible. We were the first to put in customer reporting—we call it Sky Partner Reporting. People can see on-time demand and get reports. That’s what the customer wanted, and we have to keep thinking about that. We don’t view this as a sprint or a race. EDIFACT lasted 30 or 40 years and it is still chugging. We’ll make sure it’s done right.
You talk to customers in all different forms. What do you hear about what the industry could be doing better? What do people want from Delta that they don’t get?
We hear pretty consistently—and if this is news to you guys, then you’re not paying attention—get me through the airport fast. Speed. We view the airport as “how fast can we get people through,” and that’s not an easy aspiration. We were the first to invest in Clear and first with Digital ID, trying to make sure that piece of the equation can go as fast and as smooth as possible. We see green shoots; that ultimately will be a good answer for us. We have to work with the TSA and the government and they’re actually pretty good partners. We don’t just blame it on them; we work with them and say, “Digital ID is working, now let’s make sure the back systems are fast and let’s get people out of that tension area,” which is one of the most tense areas through the travel ribbon.
We need to continue to use digital applications to make that experience easy. We need everybody on the app because the app will tell you pretty much everything you need to know. You have fewer people asking where their gate or connecting gate is; it’s all right there. We have the data and we just need to make it easy for our customers to access. The other thing is that people want a modern and more premium airport experience. We made some pretty big bets when COVID hit. We put over $12 billion of investment into our real estate team for the airports. In retrospect, it was a great decision. We didn’t know if we’d have an industry, but there was uncertainty, empty airports, no labor supply issues, and no inflation. We were able to get these projects done fast, on time, and often ahead of budget.
Now I’d argue we have some of the best facilities in the country. If you’ve been to L.A., LaGuardia, or Salt Lake City, these are completely brand new airports with reconfigurations. When you put in clubs—we learned that from Virgin Atlantic—when you put good clubs in, people value it versus it just being a resting area. We invest in those and keep expanding them. We have the most number of clubs and hopefully you guys have seen the new Delta One lounge in JFK; we just opened one in L.A. This is world-class. Opening up a new Sky Club in Boston to open the Delta One lounge there in a few weeks is the hardest part of my job. Seattle will be in the first quarter of ’25, and then we’ll just keep investing more into the center core hubs.
That airport experience people want, and they value having the choice to buy up. Think about our seats in the air. People want fast, free Wi-Fi; by the way, it saves corporations a lot of money too because it is not expensive. It feels like you’re at home and you can just access it. Having the comforts not even just from your inflight entertainment system—you can choose whether you want to be in Delta One, Delta Premium Select, or Comfort Plus. Leisure travelers are buying them as well. It’s exciting to see both leisure and business demand valuing options and choices. Customers like it and they’re happier. We see speed and sort of more premium experiences. This was happening before COVID because there was a shift in consumer spending from goods to services. In COVID it was all goods, but now that trend is coming back. Within services, it’s travel, and within travel, it’s international travel. There’s still a lot of healthy demand for Delta’s customers.
Investing during COVID for the companies that were able to do that was smart. I worked with another airline that did two capital projects that survived the pandemic: a whole new reservation system, because it was the perfect time with low volume to test and learn, and the other was a whole project around their loyalty program. It’s very interesting because for the companies that came out of this, they had the means and foresight to say “what can I do during this time?” I’m going to be hopeful and say we’re going to figure out a way to get through this as a society. For now, how can I keep a core group of people? Delta was in a position to keep everybody employed, which was not everybody’s position. That was huge in terms of morale while you’re working on all this.
Even blocking the middle seats for that year—commercially it’s not a great decision, but from an employee and customer safety perspective, that’s the kind of thing we did because we didn’t really know exactly what was going on. We bought 1,400 electrostatic sprayers—if you want one let me know, because it turned out disease wasn’t transferable on surfaces. You just didn’t know exactly. But it did galvanize the teams. As you know, there are a lot of new people in the industry because of layoffs or early-out programs. We spent a lot of time making sure the culture is there because when you lose a large portion of your workforce, we’ve got to get back and make sure that Delta culture, which we really believe is a competitive asset, gets engaged with all of our new employees.
We talk about disruption. Aside from the pandemic, you had CrowdStrike, which just came out of nowhere, and the ongoing weather disruptions. What have you learned as a company about handling those kinds of disruptions?
Obviously that has been in the news quite a bit. We were probably a little over-indexed on particular technologies. We have a motto here in Delta Sales to stay humble and hungry. That was a good “humble” time. I spent two days handing out candy at the Fort Myers airport because I couldn’t even get onto a system. But obviously there are a lot of learnings that we’ll take from an IT perspective in terms of… we think we do a good job, but we’ve got to make sure when we have partners that we also have that same level of intensity. We’ll put that one in the humble category.
I think it is very cultural. People are pretty much accepting that there are unforeseen things, but it’s how you handle it. Transparency. We had a very tough three days but we came back to number one completion factor and on-time by the fourth day. We got so many complimentary letters during that period because the employees oddly shined during that period. We appreciated the customers who I think appreciated that our employees took care of them during the very worst of times. It took the edge off of the harshness of those three days, but at least our people were able to shine and that gives you a little sense of pride.
Thanks for taking some time with us today, Steve. Really great discussion. We have a season two wrap-up question we’ve asked everybody: you’re on the road a lot, what is your guilty pleasure when you’re out?
When I travel, I don’t know if it’s a guilty pleasure, maybe it’s guilty because I want to make sure I stay in shape, but I love running wherever I go. Whether it’s Central Park in New York, the monuments in D.C., or the riverfront in Seattle. I’ll be in London and there’s nothing better than running in Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace. You don’t see that here. It’s a guilty pleasure but it also helps you stay in shape and keeps that global view front and center.
Steve, thanks. Appreciate your time and insight. Keep it up. Steve Sear is the Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Distribution for Delta Air Lines. Thanks again, Steve. Take care. All right, see you.
Mike, we will be right back with headwinds and tailwinds. I want to take a moment and talk about our advisory practice. Travel Again Advisory brings clarity to complex issues, infuses creativity into solutions, and elevates your company with a new level of competitiveness in today’s dynamic world. Our practice focuses on two key areas: improving results and maximizing shareholder value.
In our last project, we helped a very large company with their supplier strategy, helping them to navigate and build plans around changes in the air distribution world, in particular NDC. We ensured that they had the relationships they needed, the plan they needed, and the deals their customers wanted, and really understood the future of the distribution landscape. But that’s not all we do; we focus on transactions, helping companies buy or sell or add on a complementary asset to their current position. All in all, we do a lot of work in and around the industry. We bring expertise in a whole range of areas. In this environment you need a new strategy for this day; if you’re using yesterday’s strategy, you likely will not be successful. For more information contact us at traveladvisory.com and we will be in touch to see how we can help you.
Now we will wrap with headwinds and tailwinds where we identify what we think is adding value to the travel industry or taking it away. I’m up first with a tailwind and I’m going to stay on the Delta trend line here. They reported financial results for the September quarter and provided its outlook for the December quarter. Highlights of the September quarter, including both GAAP and adjusted metrics, were really amazing thanks to the exceptional work of the entire Delta team. They continue to lead the industry operationally and financially with double-digit operating margin and nearly $3 billion of free cash flow generation year-to-date. That’s right from their quarterly statement; they had an amazing quarter. It’s a great sign for the broader industry and a great sign for Delta continuing to take the lead in the airline space.
The outlook is really good. The major airlines are a bellweather for the industry overall and Delta is certainly a bellweather for the airline industry. We follow them closely. Steve mentioned they put back a billion dollars into their employee profit sharing, which is a really great example of how companies can motivate and how that virtuous circle can really work for you and help you navigate through difficult times.
That’s a good lead into our headwind because the things I chose were more about the state of affairs with low-cost carriers. As much as we need a very healthy U.S. airline industry and a healthy aviation industry globally—it helps fuel basically all business everywhere and gets us to the places we need to go—having competition is healthy and important too. The low-cost carriers have all been really falling on harder times. Some of that is reflected in the choices customers make now in this environment about the product they’re choosing and the airlines they’re choosing. Are they choosing reliability and a certain amount of comfort or benefit they can’t necessarily get with a low-cost carrier?
We’ve seen the struggles Southwest has been having, JetBlue, Spirit, Frontier, etc. I think they’re all trying to find their way, but we need them, or at least a segment of them, because it helps keep a healthy check and balance in the industry. For me, it’s more of a headwind saying that potentially having carriers shutting down doesn’t help the industry either. We need healthy competition in all segments. We’ll stay tuned. As long as overall demand stays healthy, there’s a pretty good chance most or all of them will find their way.
That is our show. Thanks again to our sponsor, safetravelRX, and we will see you back here next week. Have a good night, Mike. See you, Steve. Bye everybody.