Progress is sometimes slow. It stops and starts. Sometimes it even goes backward, but over time our optimism is usually rewarded. Here's an update on a few items from our wish list.
ASTA continues to make progress in its campaign to make membership in the Society more of a value proposition for dues-paying members. For years, ASTA has been plagued by a free-rider problem because many of its programs and activities confer benefits on nonmembers, reducing their incentive to join and also reducing the value equation for those who do.
Our calendar tells us that the new ARC contract, which was extensively rewritten last year, is coming into force in July. ASTA has recruited trade lawyer (and Travel Weekly columnist) Mark Pestronk to lead a webinar this week designed to give agency managers practical advice on dealing with the changes. ASTA decided to call it a members-only event, and that was the right call.
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Boeing resumed delivery of its 787 Dreamliner last week, handing off a new aircraft to launch customer All Nippon Airways. Equally notable, production at the firm's assembly plant in Everett, Wash., increased to seven aircraft per month. Boeing now says it intends to meet its 2013 delivery commitments by the end of the year, despite the delays in developing modifications for the battery system.
Boeing also put another feather in its cap last week in a deal with Southwest that launches yet another variant of the 737, the 737 Max-7, for delivery in 2019. If you thought Boeing had run out of ways to tweak the 737 design, think again.
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The process of getting airline ancillary services into the GDS, where agents can see them and book them, has been agonizingly slow, but things got a little less agonizing for Sabre users last week when the GDS revealed that its subscribers can now book prepaid baggage fees for Air France and KLM, using the not-so-new EMD, or electronic miscellaneous document, to report the transaction through ARC.
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Tourism is old hat in the Caribbean, but not in Haiti, where Stephanie Villedrouin, the minister of tourism, is looking to boost a fledgling tourism economy that has nowhere to go but up.
As we report in the news pages today, more and more ingredients are coming together to make it happen: Haiti's first new U.S.-branded hotel, a Best Western, has opened and will be joined next year by Marriott; the market has attracted airlift in the form of a new JetBlue service later this year; and a tourism master plan is being developed, with assistance from Mexico's Fonatur, which knows a thing or two about master plans.
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As we report in our cover story this week, the airlines have made great progress in controlling their historic tendency to overcapacity, but here's an instance where progress may be a mixed blessing.
Slow capacity growth means fares are rising and cost-conscious leisure travelers are feeling the pinch, as evidenced by Carnival Cruise Lines' decision to avoid Europe in 2014.
The line, which will have two ships in Europe this summer, recently said it will not deploy any tonnage in Europe next year because it expects airfares to be too high. Maybe that's not so much a step backward as a side step.