Last month, a group of protesters marched around Edmonton\u2019s Winston Churchill Square and tried to force their way into the adjacent CBC studios and onto the airwaves. They carried signs reading \u201cStop the Calgary habit\u201d and \u201cFly EIA every time.\u201d The CBC\u2019s security guards turned them away, which was wise, considering the mock protesters were on the payroll of the Edmonton Airports authority.
The exercise was meant to launch a new advertising campaign seen on billboards and on the web urging travellers from Alberta\u2019s northern half to use the Edmonton International Airport instead of driving three hours south to Calgary International. An estimated 750,000 passengers per year from the capital region drive to Calgary to catch more direct and often cheaper flights to international destinations. To hear it from Edmonton Airports\u2019 vice president of marketing and business development, Peter McCart, they do it out of a \u201chabit\u201d akin to an addiction.
I have no problem with a not-for-profit public entity marketing itself aggressively, even negatively. I have no problem with it using guerrilla marketing tactics. But the message here bothers me. We have an enterprise essentially blaming its own customers for doing what comes naturally in a free market: seeking out the best selection and the lowest price.
The airport is trying to pass off its real problem of business strategy as a problem of perception among its clientele. Just look at the tag line to the ads: \u201cWhen you go south, so does your service.\u201d It\u2019s your airport, people. Use it or lose it.
Although the \u201cprotest\u201d campaign has garnered a lot of attention, I doubt the reaction was what the airport authority had planned for. In Edmonton, the majority of people who\u2019d never adopted the Calgary habit started to go, \u201cHmmm.\u201d In Calgary, pundits derided the campaign as a last-ditch loser\u2019s lament in the Battle of Alberta.
Let\u2019s face it, Calgary International is Alber-ta\u2019s undisputed airport hub. Although the two cities have roughly the same population of one million, airplanes departing from Calgary carried 12.2 million passengers last year, compared to 6.1 million for Edmonton.
There are some structural reasons for this. Calgary is the business capital, with a great many more head offices than Edmonton, and therefore a bigger \u201cbusiness travel\u201d market. Calgary is also closer to U.S. destinations and transcontinental flight paths. It is closer to the Rocky Mountain resorts that attract international tourists.
On top of that, Edmonton International is, by dint of a Transport Canada decision made back in the 1950s, a long way from the city. Once you\u2019ve hit Highway 2 south of town for 45 minutes already, staying on the freeway all the way to Calgary seems less daunting.
Still, the Calgary \u201chabit\u201d is not an easy or a natural one. It adds at least five hours and $200 in real costs to an Edmontonian\u2019s trip. It\u2019s not a decision anyone takes lightly.
The fact is Calgary\u2019s airport has some irreversible advantages of location. Edmonton Airports, instead of shaming its clientele for disloyalty, needs to be countering those advantages \u2014 as any competitive business would do.
That might mean developing faster, cheaper and more convenient ways of getting between the airport and the city; many pundits have suggested an extension to the city\u2019s light rail transit system or even high-speed rail, but just deregulating the taxi and shuttle business to encourage more competition would help.
Being more competitive might also mean lowering landing fees for airlines and becoming a go-to Canadian hub for discount carriers. But then, of course, the Edmonton Airports authority would have to do something difficult \u2014 lower its own operating costs and stop building fancy terminals, those monuments to management egos.
It\u2019s been 16 years since Transport Canada spun off metropolitan airport authorities, allowing them to operate like businesses. Some are still struggling to get the hang of it.\tIE<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Attempts to coax air travellers to Edmonton and away from Calgary could backfire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3013,3014],"tags":[2552],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":370662,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319164\/revisions\/370662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319164"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=319164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}