EGPF Forum

Iain wrote: ↑Tue May 03, 2022 8:17 pm https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/nat ... nts-venue/

Good to see them positioning for the post-pandemic world, and capitalising on Glasgow's enduring reputation for conferences and concerts.

PiperOne wrote: ↑Tue May 03, 2022 9:18 pm

Iain wrote: ↑Tue May 03, 2022 8:17 pm https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/nat ... nts-venue/

Good to see them positioning for the post-pandemic world, and capitalising on Glasgow's enduring reputation for conferences and concerts.

See,that's what I can never comprehend with the city. World class conference,music,sporting venues and hotels literally everywhere now. Yet we've still got a (by comparison) backwater airport. 30-40 years ago Glasgow's problem was accomodation but now it has become accessability. We really need to address this issue quickly.

Yes, these facts largely undermine AGS/Provan's arguments that the airport's problems are not down to them and instead down to the city being "unattractive" or not having enough inbound visitors.

If the SEC can look to spend £200m enlarging thier facility and national and international hotels chains are investing huge sums and constantly expanding, it quite clearly demonstrates a strong and attractive visitor economy. Obviously many of the visitors using these facilities will travel to the city by air, so the airport should grow too - but it doesn't. I wonder why?

This isn’t what Provan said. He said that in the wake of the damage done to the travel sector by Covid and the heightened caution of airlines in a new, smaller market they need to rejuvenate the joined up multi agency approach that proved successful before.

Clive wrote: ↑Wed May 04, 2022 11:16 am This isn’t what Provan said. He said that in the wake of the damage done to the travel sector by Covid and the heightened caution of airlines in a new, smaller market they need to rejuvenate the joined up multi agency approach that proved successful before.

Whilst he didn't say that directly, he did say "airlines fly to cities, not airports" and also that the city needed to "reposition" itself. From that I take a quite clear attempt to imply that any failures at GLA are not down to AGS, but instead down to the city it serves and the bodies that promote it. Quite clearly the extension of that is the implication that there's not enough promotion and resultantly not enough visitors to drive pax through the airport.

I've said it in the other thread, but what evidence is there that the "joined up" approach is not available any more? What evidence is there that Glasgow's tourism offering is poorly or wrongly "positioned"? (as Mr Provan clearly implies it is).

Irrespective of what he may have said, or how we might interpret it, it still doesn't answer the fundamental question that Bill and I are posing here about why public and private investors see the city as an attractive place to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in accomodation and facilities for inbound visitors, but those in charge at GLA can't convince airlines to to invest in new routes to transport these self same visitors to and from the city?

Quite obviously this doesn't stack up. How is the city attractive enough for these investments in hotels etc, but not enough for airlines to fly here?

This is even more of a question when we consider that hotels are fixed assets that can't be moved, whereas an aircraft can fairly easily be reassigned or rebased if a route doesn't work out. As such I would've thought building a hotel is more risky than starting an airline route. Any experts on hotels that can comment on this?