TIA shop revenue climbs back up

The airport still doesn't have as many passengers as it did before the terrorist attacks. But its stores and restaurants are doing nicely.

By JEAN HELLER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 6, 2002

TAMPA -- Although airline passenger counts have not returned to pre-terrorism levels at Tampa International Airport, those who are flying are eating and buying more.

Gross concession revenue for October 2002 was up 23.6 percent over a year earlier, which is understandable because October 2001 was a month after the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. But the revenue also was 8.6 percent higher than October 2000, when record numbers of people were flying.

"We're not up to where our (pre-terrorism) business plan projected we would be, but we're definitely headed in the right direction," Louis Miller, executive director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority, told his board Thursday.

Since terrorists smashed three jet aircraft into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001, commercial air traffic in the United States has struggled to attract wary leisure travelers back, and a rocky economy has depressed business travel. Yet TIA regularly has fared better than much of the rest of the country and continues to do so.

Despite the fact that US Airways, which was one of TIA's top three carriers, filed for bankruptcy in August and United Airlines is expected to file for bankruptcy soon, passenger counts at TIA continue to best most of the rest of the nation's airports.

They were 4.3 percent lower in October than two years earlier, but nationwide, passenger counts were down 13.2 percent for the same period.

"United accounts for just 4 or 5 percent of our market," Miller said. "If they file for Chapter 11, they'll continue to fly. It is not a significant impact for us."

But the best economic news for TIA was rung up at cash registers in the airport's shops and restaurants. The good numbers are due largely to greater "dwell times." People get to the airport early, as instructed, and often find themselves with extra time on their hands. To pass it, they eat, drink and buy things.

Total gross concession revenues for the airport rose from $25-million in October 2000 to more than $27-million in October 2002.

Food and beverage sales at the new Airside E totaled more than $235,000 in October, and it was open for only half the month. Had it been open during all of October, it likely would have had the highest sales of any airside. Overall, food and beverage sales at the airsides were up nearly 25 percent over October 2000. Merchandise sales were up more than 9 percent.

In the Landside terminal, food and beverage sales topped 2000 by nearly 16 percent, and merchandise sales rose more than 6 percent.

Automobile rentals, which were painfully slow to recover from the downturn in air travel, also showed marked improvements.

Revenue for October 2002 was down 4.8 percent from two years earlier, largely because National Car Rental moved off the airport property. Hertz, Budget, Avis and Dollar all showed healthy increases in revenue, ranging from 12 to 27 percent.

The dark spot on the ledger remained In-Flight Kitchens, the company that does the airline catering at TIA, which lost nearly 34 percent of its revenue from October 2000 to October 2002. The decline mirrors cutbacks in food service for airline passengers.

And for the Thanksgiving holiday, the number of vehicles parked at airport facilities was down more than 22 percent from the same holiday weekend in 2000.

"It's a phenomenon of customers not using the short-term parking garage," Miller said. "Since the meeters and greeters can't go to the gates anymore, they're picking people up and dropping them off at curbside."

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