tim's experiment

Goodness, a whole page in Monday’s Standard was devoted to Routes World, an international conference held in Hong Kong.

Routes World is an annual get-together for people building and running airports. It is held in a different place each year. Hong Kong was a happy host because links with other airports can help its ambition to become, or remain, an international air transport hub.

This is one of the more plausible of our hub ambitions, which now number about 20. What is the collective noun for a multiplicity of hubs? A hubbub? A hubble bubble? A hubris?

Most of the Routes World proceedings were no doubt routine conversations about things only interesting to people in the industry, or with a morbid fascination for the economics of airports.

It does seem, though, that the travel business suffers from some shared delusions. This is not surprising. Many professions have them. Journalists had a shared delusion for a long time that their consumers were mainly interested in accurate information. Now that the internet is up and running it has become clear that most people find inaccurate information much more interesting.

One of the air people’s shared delusions concerns sports. Consider this offering from Philipe Karat, head of the transport part of the Brazilian Tourist Board. He reportedly said that “Brazil’s experience hosting the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics significantly raised its global profile, attracting more tourists and new airlines…”

This is wildly at variance with the growing consensus among people who study such things that hosting international sports circuses of this kind does not provide an economic boost, the extra income from visitors is grossly overstated, and is off-set by an increase in the number of locals taking holidays abroad to avoid the circus.

As two sports economists put it:

The World Cup coincided with the start of Brazil’s longest recession since the 1930s. That rather undermined claims that it would boost the economy. The impoverished country then had to fork out another $4.6 billion (predictably 50 per cent over budget) to host the Rio Olympics.

Outside the tourism bubble most people now agree that it was a terrible mistake to hold World Cups in Brazil, or in South Africa, since both countries had more important needs than a bit of fun and a temporary influx of foreigners. Brazil, as Kuper and Szymanski put it, “sacrificed a little bit of its future to host the World Cup.”

For another interesting delusion we can turn to the panel discussion on “the transformation of airports into sought-after travel destinations”. This is the idea that people will plan flights so that they can visit airports they particularly fancy.

As one speaker put it, “If passengers can enjoy a comfortable and pleasant shopping experience at Hong Kong airport there would be little incentive to seek transit through … other destinations.”

Someone needs to grab these people firmly by the ear and explain that air passengers are not looking for a “comfortable and pleasant shopping experience.” In fact attempts to turn air travel into a shopping experience are more resented than appreciated.

The preoccupation with lucrative retail outlets leads to difficulty in finding the things which travellers really need, like bags or electrical adapters. And the comfort and pleasure will not compensate for a poor range of goods on offer. Hong Kong airport would be a more attractive destination if it had a decent bookshop.

It is a basic axiom of international air travel that all airports are very much the same. The differences between them pale into insignificance compared with matters like the date and time of the flight, the intended destination, the impact of a mid-journey change, if any, and above all of course the price of the ticket. The flight, we hope, will be comfortable and pleasant. The airport merely has to be efficient.

I have been processed through a wide variety of airports. The only one I would really like to transit through again is Istanbul, which has excellent local shops starring Turkish Delight and paklava with a wide variety of colours and ingredients. But I am not going to choose Turkish Airlines just so I can taste these delicious marvels again.