Sask. airports strut stuff in Vegas

With a chuckle, Jim Hunter concedes it was a little like speed-dating for airports: a recent travel industry conference at which the Regina and Saskatoon airports flirted with airlines and tourism packagers.

The World Routes Conference, held this year in Las Vegas, is where all these groups meet to chat up each other.

The CEO of the Regina Airport Authority said this week’s expedition was “highly successful”.

But don’t expect quick results.

Hunter said it’s over “five years — maybe — that I’m hoping to see results.

“We hope to see something sooner. It’s hard to say.”

For hopefuls like the Regina International Airport, it’s a chance to talk with managers from airlines other than the ones that already fly into it, namely scheduled airlines Air Canada and WestJet, plus the regional or express arms of them, United and Delta, as well as charter specialists Air Transat and Sunwing.

In all, 2,800 people and 300 airlines registered for the conference, held for the first time in the U.S.

The Regina airport did not go alone. As in the past few years, it combined its effort with that of the Saskatoon International Airport, whose former CEO, Bill Restall, got this process going several years ago when he began seeking a summer charter connection to the United Kingdom.

In time, Saskatoon decided to join forces with Regina, plus Tourism Saskatchewan.

Hunter said the advantage of co-operating in this way is that the two airports can offer an economically healthy joint market of 1.1 million instead of two with 550,000. “Each airport, separately, just can’t bring enough to the table.”

He added it took only a few minutes for the Saskatchewanians — who brought along a pair of scarlet-coated Mounties from “Depot” Division and a huge northern pike with which passing travel executives could get their pictures taken — to realize this was “as much a tourism thing as an airline thing.”

By that, he meant it’s important to grab the attention of tourism and holiday packaging firms that put passengers onto airlines, rather than the other way around.

And if a tourism packager looking for a new niche market remembers Saskatchewan and those Mounties, “we’re hoping that when the day comes, we’ll get some consideration.”