The food court is mostly used by staff on tea and Coffee breaks and is almost deserted in the afternoon and evening.
Most food courts are deserted in the afternoon. Perhaps what they need to do is similar to what was done in Dublin, and make the food court 50% airside.
Lowering the charges in the short term car park would also encourage people to spend.
€1 spent in a car park goes directly into the pockets of the airport.
€1 spent in a coffee shop - maybe only 5c to 10c goes into the pockets of the airport.
The deliberate decision to discourage meeters and greeters to visit the airport by not including a viewing area
Ryan, I doubt that anyone took a
deliberate decision to discourage meeters and greeters.
The era of meeters and greeters in Ireland has long gone. The last time I was in Shannon I poped up to the viewing gallery, and spent 30 minutes up there on a phone conversation, and I was the only person using the viewing gallery at the time - this was a weekend summer morning, and the airport was, for once, 'busy'.
cork, it lost €14 million in 2011
Thats over €10 per departing passenger.
I think it will also depend how aggressive the DAA would want to be in using Cork to compete with Shannon once it leaves the DAA group. Look at London, LGW has been very aggressively marketed and does seem to be hurting STN, but also LHR to a lesser extent. It will be interesting to see how the DAA will compete with SNN.
The DAA is still owned by the same person that owns Shannon, so you may find that DAA is forced by its shareholder to go easy on the west coast. I'm not sure if there is much more to be gained from Shannon in Cork. The Shannon European market is basically gone, and the UK routes are quite well established, usually by the same carrier operating the routes in Cork. Competition works both ways, so expect SNN to push hard for Wizz for example.
Airports need to be aggressive with ancillary revenue. In my opinion there is significant room for growth of Duty Free and retail spend at ORK.
Brian - thats a very easy sentance to say,
but the reality of a recession means that people don't spend.
Starbucks and Subway are gone, the food court closes early
Means too many Catering options.
Means that its not profitable to keep it open. More space = more staff = more construction costs.
Manchester terminal 1 is a great example of airport retail, it is a bit of a labyrnth to get through, but the environment is nice and the products are really well merchandised
You are comparing a major terminal airport with significant traffic to a regional airport with just over 1m departing passengers.
Dublin T2 is also better than ORK in this respect
Someone told me that the DAA are global airport retailers, and retailing in T2 is superb.
In the current enviornment airlines do not want to pay their way.
In the current environment, nobody wants to pay their way.
I believe that the airport will have to look at other revenue streams. In retailing, people would have to spend an extra €100 each in shops and dutyfree to make up the short fall.