Are the hubs driving tourism?

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¿Realmente son los Hub tourism promoters? In this installment we analyze the success of a connection center and its true benefits for a country.

a few days ago in a ride, I had an interesting conversation about the Hub and several myths that revolve around these that apparently would be the solution for the tourist development of a country.

In this talk we obviously dealt with the case of Ecuador in particular, where we are a small country in territory, large in population, but close to huge connection centers such as Colombia, Peru and Panama.

Within this context, authorities or representatives of the tourism sector have been heard on more than one occasion that Ecuador, to be a tourist power, should be a Hub in any of its main Airports of Quito, Guayaquil it is included Manta.

This dream has two realities that must be taken into account and above all, Not every country can have a large hub and this does not guarantee large numbers of tourists either..

Hub as a promoter of tourism

What it takes to have a Hub

First we are going to review what is needed to have a Hub in any country or airport:

• Mercado: a significant and attractive number of passengers.
• Airport: a terminal that operationally and technically offers the facilities for a hub operation.
• Airline: you need an airline that has the operating weight (planes), the commercial and economic decision to invest in the creation of a Hub in X airport.

Are 3 basic variables allow us to see that if there is not a large and interesting market, No airline will arrive that wants to make the decision to start a large operation under the Hub concept.

In the particular case of Ecuador, We have airports with the technical and operational capacity to receive any airline that wants to start this type of operation, but the market is missing and will continue to be missing, at least for many more years.

myths

Now that we have seen the basic factors for creating a Hub, where it does not depend only on the intention that it exists, but and mainly, of an airline that, attracted by the market, initiates it, Let's see the myths of the famous and highly valued Hub:

• A Hub brings more tourism: the reality is that tourism will reach a country with or without a hub, as long as this country is attractive, have tourism promotion, security and development strategy. Here it is important to indicate that for example, Hubs like the one in Panama that moves more than 15 million passengers per year, only close to 3 Millions of these remain in Panama. There are countries like Costa Rica that are smaller than Ecuador in population, that do not have an airport hub, but that your origin/destination traffic is much more important, thanks to the importance and tourist strategy that has been generated.
• larger hub, more tourists: there is no exact rule, but there are cases such as the Hub of Lima that, due to the huge tourist market that it has, the Hub is a plus, but despite that, the percentage of passengers who remain on connecting flights to those who stay, is still older.
• Airports must be Hub: The airports, In its great majority, are ready to be Hub, but the market and the airline are missing.
• Any airport can be a hub: for an airport to become a hub, must comply with all the necessary requirements indicated above, mainly have an airline.

The romantic idea that a Hub will solve problems or help improve the number of tourists arriving in a country is not as easy or simple as it is thought..

coming down from sleep, each country and city have their reality, where there are many other additional factors to be able to have a Hub and in most cases it will be more important to seek to make the origin/destination flights even more dynamic (direct) to have many flights from a central point, What is the goal of a hub?.

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