They are three key members of a broad coalition working to bring more air service—and more customers—to Atlantic City.

Maureen Adams, regional vice president of casino marketing and sales for Harrah’s Entertainment, leads an alliance of casinos and other hospitality providers targeting new customers through better transportation, both in the air and on the ground.

Bart Mueller, executive director of the South Jersey Transportation Authority, is the force behind a plan to turn Atlantic City’s local airfield into a regional airport accommodating international flights.

Sharon Gordon, SJTA’s director of marketing and communications, has lobbied multiple carriers to add ACY to their routes. That effort is paying off with the recent addition of flights via Spirit and AirTran to Boston and Atlanta.

Adams, Mueller and Gordon spoke with Casino Connection Managing Editor Marjorie Preston about the importance of transportation options to the future of South Jersey.

Casino Connection: When you try to persuade a new airline to fly into ACY, what’s your pitch?

Gordon: Some airlines feel like they serve this market through Newark and Philadelphia, so the pitch is that the whole pie would grow with additional service here. The airlines are shifting service around, looking to maximize their route planning, and there are issues in the larger airports in terms of congestion. If all incoming service to ACY did was relieve congestion, travel would be simpler for everyone. 

Is it hard to get a commitment from a new carrier?  

Gordon: One consultant said they’re like happy hippos—to get them to move from their comfort zone, you really have to tell the story. And we have a great story to tell. There’s a market here, with community support and business support and investments of billions of dollars. That investment was not done willy-nilly. You have to sit at a table with these decision makers, look at an airline route planner and say, “It’s time you started bringing people to this destination, and here’s why.”

Mueller: They play follow the leader. As AirTran comes here and is successful, other airlines will come in behind them. As we fill those planes, hopefully they’ll add additional cities.

Although we’re talking about the inbound market, we also have a tremendous outbound market. We’re not going to be Philadelphia International, nor do we want to be, but we have the capacity to handle probably 3 million passengers. We’re doing about 1.2 million right now.

Once we put air service in place, once we add frequency and destinations, we will fill these planes. People do not want to go through the anxiety of dealing with Newark Liberty or Philadelphia to get down here.

Gordon: And we’re really maturing this airport. There probably has been over $100 million already invested in infrastructure improvements, upgrades to our electrical system on the runway and our tower; we have all new snow equipment, so the minute you start to see flurries, when Philadelphia and Newark close, we’re open and we can take their diversions. We can be Philadelphia’s third runway.

One of the things we sorely need now is a federal inspection station for international flights; it’s part of the capital plan this year. Meanwhile, we’ve been in discussions with a low-cost carrier for pre-cleared international service, and we’re high on their radar screen. And they never would have stepped it up if AirTran hadn’t come in the way they did.

Mueller: What’s significant about AirTran is that it’s already in Philly and Newark.

Gordon: Right, that was major. We’re finally starting to chip away at that old attitude of ‘We already serve your market.’

How do you bundle rooms and air travel, then market these deals?

Adams: With Spirit and with Air Tran, we’ve found that partnering with their marketing departments is the best way to go. They sell the seats and we sell the rooms. They do a lot of online advertising and we get banners on each other’s sites, doing some geo-targeting where customers who call into each system get a message back that the air service is there.

We also are very, very good marketers. The casino industry has perfected direct mail, so we send hundreds of thousands of pieces, I’m sure between us, each and every month, getting the message out.

With 2,700-plus new rooms in this market, this is so important for the convention business. In the past when we’ve gone to sales conferences, we were able to entice large meeting planners all the way up to the point where we had to tell them how to get here. Then we lost them. Not only was it unbelievably inconvenient to travel here, but it was costly to add ground transportation to what might be an hour flight from Boston.

Gordon: The most fabulous sales teams in town couldn’t overcome the barrier in terms of transportation. Now for the first time we’re in the Boston and Atlanta markets without that hurdle. We’re being received quite differently now, which is huge for us.

Adams: This is really the first time we’ve had enough room in this market to attract larger conventions from out of state, and finally we have the lift to get them here. Now it’s a matter of putting forth all the sales and marketing to keep people coming into the city.

We have folks that still think of Atlantic City as a summertime market or just a gaming market, but it’s grown secretly into a destination resort—only people don’t know about it!

I say all the time, “If you haven’t been here in the last year or two, you have not been to Atlantic City—you just have not been.”

Mueller: So we have to do, collectively, a better job of marketing the city as a destination. 

Now we’ve got connections to Boston and Atlanta. What are your other target cities?
 
Adams: When we first sat at the table together, the first question we asked was, ‘What cities does everybody want?’ It was a quick decision to line up Chicago, Atlanta and Boston. All of us had strategic interest in those markets for all the right business reasons.

Gordon: Before, we had no direct service to New England at all. Boston now gives us access there. We have no Midwest connection, other than what we can get through AirTran, but you have to go Southwest to go Midwest, so that’s a priority. Chicago is next.

How will changes in airline service change South Jersey?

Adams: We all firmly believe that the number of visitors in this area will grow. That’s vital to South Jersey, because South Jersey lives on tourism.

We’ve traditionally depended on the drive market to Atlantic City. But now, with convenience gaming in our biggest feeder markets, we cannot count on that long-term. Everybody knows if Atlantic City does not transition into a destination resort given the competition in Philadelphia, New York and Connecticut, we’ve got a real problem—not just the casino industry, but the hoteliers, tourism as a whole on the Jersey shore—everybody has a problem.

Out of economic times like these sometimes come good things. Everyone has a common goal now. The properties have made the investments to make the transition, and when you open three new towers with 900-plus rooms apiece, you have to get a return on that investment. You need to expand the market. You need to bring more people here. You need to become a regional destination.

Where do you see Atlantic City International in another 10 years?

Mueller: I don’t know how many carriers we’ll have, but our goal and objective now is to grow to about 5 million passengers. That’s in our master plan study, and we’re so mandated by the FAA.

Transportation drives economic development. It creates lasting jobs and overall vitality for the entire region. We’re looking at how we now grow the airport to serve the entire South Jersey region.