I take it about 400 people attended the DO, a sizeable portion from out of town. It's very possible then that the DO ends up being a money maker for CO, since most of the hard costs are either paid by attendees or represent time donated by CO employees.

Question: Did anyone attending the DO fly in on an airline other than CO?

Most of the hard costs, meaning...

Like renting the poolside at the Doubletree for Friday night, with food, 2 alcoholic drinks per guest, a band?

The conference rooms at the Sheraton for Saturday afternoon, with snacks and non-alcoholic beverages?

Four buses to the Bunker, four to Downtown, plus others to the IAH tours and shuttles among the hotels and terminals for Friday evening and whole day Saturday?

Food and all-you-can-drink at the PC party, with a band?

Flight simulator time that they could have rented out to other users?

Name tags and small gifts for each attendee?

Silent auction items that they donated?

Please pardon my ignorance but was there a fee to attend the DO for participants?

I agree with all of your hard-cost items except categories such as flight simulator time, which probably would not be rented out during the weekend (although there are hard, cost-center costs associated with the flight simulator, such as cost of labor, depreciation, cost of power to run it, etc). Also, the items donated are not exactly hard costs since they were voluntarily donated, but they clearly have a value.

As a producer of major special events, I can tell you most of the hard costs you describe above, the ones primarily associated with the hotel facilities, were either very minimal or provided at no additional charge to CO in return for the business provided by the DO attendees.

Yes, the bands probably cost real money, as, most likely, did the food and drinks, but probably no more than a total of $3,000 - $5,000 depending on what kind of bands were playing.

Finally, the chartered buses most likely cost hard $$ as well, I would venture to say in the neighborhood of $500/day per bus.

I doubt it. These are FTers booking tickets well in advance. Most of us bought discounted seats. And while IAH tends to be an expensive market, CO still has to cover the costs of flying us to/from our home markets for that money. At a CASM of 10 cents per mile, my OAK-IAH-OAK RT would have to be $325 + taxes. I can tell you I paid less than that.

Remember CO also blocked off valuable flight sim time for us, in addition to the venues, food and drink, and transportation they provided. They either needed to backfill that sim time with rented sim time, or by deferring training (which has costs to the business). This was probably the priciest item for them.

Where CO benefits is in the ideas they can gather from picking our brains. You can see the make-up of staff that were there for this event vs. prior events, that's really what they were trying to capitalize on. In prior events, we had the executives and some random staff positions helping with logistics and handing out badges. This time, the staff positions were more calculated. We had the executives, a large contingent of departmental and program heads with some of their staff (e.g., co.com team, onepass management, kiosk team, airport heads, etc.). Clearly they were there to get information, feedback, etc.

In some cases, the value of this feedback, combined with the positive PR CO gets from the event, may make it a break even or money maker for the company. But from a pure dollars, perspective, I doubt it.

Understand CASM, but aren't those are mostly fixed costs given they'd operate the flights at similar cost regardless of the event? Unless you're one of Reverend Dick Gregory's patients the extra fuel burn for a single incremental pax is minimal.

These guys know airline accounting better than any of us and doubt they would have added extras like the over the top food display if it wasn't short term neutral or better...especially that close to the close of the quarter.

I also doubt you would find any other company in the transportation industry - heck, any industry - that would go out of its way to host an event like this. The CO "DOs" reinvented the entire concept of the 'focus group meeting'.

CO doesn't have to do these events - or even provide anywhere near the experience they've offered over the past two versions. The fact they they're willing to go all-out like this speaks volumes about how they look at their best customers and appreciate the valuable feedback we've been able to offer through this website for so many years.

Sure, some companies provide a customer-contact experience (World of Coke in Atlanta, for one) - but this type of event, bringing customers together with top management for an informal open forum and experience is pretty much without par.

I think it's a reasonable guess that eventually some MBA student is going to do a thesis based on the CO DOs...there is alot to learn from it.

@:-) This one did after the first DO. The b school profs will never get it though and fawn over the 'brand' of Jet Blue and company. Oh how much I wish I was still in school and a certain prof's class after the Jet Blue meltdown.

Still remember David Barger (ex CO, now Jet Blue CEO) coming to speak and getting the royal treatment...bragging over dinner how their 'different' culture made them work. All while he couldn't handle lumping in a few Embraers into his fleet later in the month...and then the 07 debacle.

I honestly have no idea. I wrote it down because it was mentioned and it seemed important, but I really don't know what was meant by it and I didn't follow up to clarify. Sorry.

Absolutely, and in of itself it's a great concept.

There is one pretty brilliant twist to the focus group concept, the fact that some portion of the 400 customers use the product to get themselves to IAH in the first place.

So it's the world's first revenue-generating focus group...not bad.

There's no way CO made money on this weekend just based on our airfares for the weekend. Even with some folks in paid F, my pair of $240 r/t tickets from JFK (with 3/4 seats upgraded :D) couldn't have actually been sufficient to pay for both the plane and all the food & busses, even with most of the employees volunteering their time.

I would assume that this comes out of the marketing budget, just like the ads on TV and the subways.

S.

That may very well be correct. But the point is that CO generated revenue on its focus group, unlike almost every other focus group in America, which are only a net expense.

But the main point remains that credit must be given to CO and cigarman for putting this together and making it a real element in allowing CO to understand its marketplace.

Now if LK would only consider making that Y cabin slightly more spacious...

I can tell you what I experienced... I logged on to Continental.com within seconds of receiving the email. The counter showed over 300 Readers available on my first attempt. The glitch kept me in a loop on the sign-in page, and I had the (dis)pleasure of watching the number of Readers drop down to zero.

I emailed the auction site Customer Support. The first reply was "sorry, it was a limited quantity". I said that was not acceptable, and asked that my email be escalated to a supervisor. The same CSR replied that they were aware of the glitch and that measures were being "evaluated", whatever that means.

I was the one raising the question at the DO about the glitch, and Mark's reply to me is what xyzzy reported. I have no more information, but hope they are able to track down all the people who were affected and extend us the Reader offer.

CO probably views the DO as a down payment on future loyalty. Apple has their fanboys CO has a large clawed otter, and a guy who smokes a bunch of cigars. (man we are a motley crew)

I believe the business school grads call it building brand loyalty.

P.S. No way the world of coke (I have been to both the old and the new) compares to the DO. There was no real interaction between Coke and the customer. But then does there really need to be interaction between coke corporate and their customer. Coke is a product, Continental is a service.

CC and Premium wines at PC
 

WOW that is so the opposite:confused: of what I have learned I have presented it in EWR clubs and wanted to pay cash and was told that I had to fork over the full price for the Widow Cliquot... Strange Cheers Jane
Was in HOUSTON but to early for the party on Saturday .. and flew out at 6 pm darn it