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Passenger figures for new flight labelled `appalling'

by Shadow Tourism Minister David Dodwell yesterday.And Mr. Dodwell called for more support for the TWA flight out of St. Louis, Missouri, before the airline pulls the flight.

by Shadow Tourism Minister David Dodwell yesterday.

And Mr. Dodwell called for more support for the TWA flight out of St. Louis, Missouri, before the airline pulls the flight.

Mr. Dodwell said: "The figures are appalling. Up front spending is critical to something like this.'' He was speaking after Tourism Minister David Allen revealed poor usage of the new flight.

The first seven TWA flights failed to go above the 30 percent mark for inbound passengers -- and the highest figure logged going out was just 33 percent.

Mr. Dodwell said: "Money spent on a new service like that is more important than travelling and excessive road shows and that kind of thing.'' When the flight was launched last month, TWA chiefs said that the passenger figures would have to hit 70 percent for the flight to be continued beyond the end of the tourism season.

Mr. Dodwell said that the air industry standard was between 60 and 65 percent capacity.

He added: "This flight needs money and it needs to have it spent in the right place. It needs to have legs so you can go out into the travel industry arena and say it's working.'' The figures -- released in answer to written questions from Mr. Dodwell -- show the new flight has as little as four percent occupancy coming in and six percent leaving the Island.

When asked the cost of promoting the new flight, Mr. Allen said it was hard to give precise figures for promotional costs.

But he added that Tourism Department co-op programmes with several tour operators had cost a minimum of $20,000 per operator.

Mr. Allen added that TWA was pushing the flight by offering competitive pricing and pushing special promotional fares -- especially in June, September and October.

He said that TWA had also started a marketing blitz aimed at promoting the flight, in the public arena as well as among the airline's own staff.

And he added that the Department of Tourism had also started "travel agent blitzes'' in St. Louis and in connecting gateway cities, as well as in US west coast areas.

Mr. Dodwell also asked Mr. Allen to justify reduced spending on airport and cruise terminal arrival entertainment -- currently pegged at $150,000.

Mr. Allen said: "Economies have been made by having the few evening flights greeted by scaled-down entertainment, but flights arriving during peak day-time periods continue to receive the same level of musical greeting. There has been a universally positive feedback from our visitors to the warm welcome Government has provided through our talented local entertainers.'' Mr. Allen added that the budget for cruise ship passenger welcome bands has not been reduced.

He said: "The Ministry of Tourism continues to have the support of the Corporations of Hamilton and St. George's in providing funding. This is the second year of the partnership and one that is clearly beneficial to the public and private sectors, but most especially our visitors, for whom positive first impressions are very important.''