Wales may not yet have the travel connections of London or Amsterdam, but there are moves to improve the country’s links to the wider world. Kristian Dando looks at what is on offer for business travellers.
Howard Palser, chief executive of DragonFly, walks across an unseasonably drizzly airfield and gestures to one of his three compact turbine-driven aircraft, before opening the hatch. “Of course,” he says, “it really is a rather sexy way to travel.”
He may have a point. The plane is sumptuously appointed with cream leather seats and all sorts of small, capricious luxuries. If you’ve got the money, it knocks flying Ryanair into a cocked hat.
But while flying by private charter plane may be sexy, some see it as a cost-effective and practical option, too – perhaps more so for businesses in Wales, which are removed from the economic hubs of London and beyond. After all, Cardiff Airport is a largely leisure-driven concern and while interconnecting flights can be made via Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport to major destinations; direct business routes served by the Welsh airport are, for the moment, disappointingly thin – particularly when compared with the routes offered in Bristol, which boasts flights to Germany with Lufthansa as part of a formidable corporate travel offer.
Palser, formerly a senior lawyer, took up flying as a hobby. But he realised – after journeys of five hours and upwards to clients in Norwich – that to maximise his time, taking to the sky was in some cases the best option. After retiring five years ago he set up DragonFly and now has three aeroplanes and two full-time pilots. The corridor of the company’s modest headquarters looks like a veritable hall of fame, but Palser refrains from name dropping. “You’ll see who we’ve had when we walk through,” he says. “Discretion is a big part of what we do” – though he does make an exception for a picture of himself with a glamorous Hollywood star in his office.
“The business model we use is that time is money,” he says. “Congestion on the roads is getting worse all the time. Getting around isn’t easy – and it’s because of this that flying is a cost-effective option.”
Across Cardiff, Veritair offers a helicopter option for corporate travel. And the pain of getting from north to south Wales has been alleviated by Highland Airways’ Cardiff to Anglesey route, which has proven particularly popular with the public sector.
Property tycoon Richard Hayward uses fairly disparate methods to get around sites dotted around the country – the most impressive being the Citation II jet that he pilots himself.
“We have property all over the UK – the Wirrall, Leighton Buzzard, Bodmin. So what we tend to do is drive to locations on the M4,” he says. “Then when in London we tend to get around in my electric car (a diminutive G-Wiz) so I can park for free and not pay the congestion charge. The way we actually get up and down the motorway isn’t particularly green – we use a Range Rover – but we plan on getting greener.”
“The advantage with the jet is that I can get up to Scotland to have a series of meetings and be back in Cardiff for five pm. It’s kept at Filton near Bristol and is kept on permanent stand-by. We can be ready to go at any moment. Private flying is going to become a lot more normal in the coming years – who wants to suffer Gatwick, Stanstead or Luton? I was on a train heading to Gatwick not so long ago and received a text message informing me that the flight was cancelled.”
“That said, the London Paddington train service is very good and sometimes I take it,” says Hayward. “You can work on it, so it’s an advantage.”
But there is a feeling among others that the railway network is being stretched and the passenger milked. Earlier this year, passengers on First Great Western, which operate services from south Wales to London and destinations in between, was the subject of mass passenger protests at the rising costs of fares, unpredictability of services and passenger congestion. Even when ensconced in the relative luxury of a business class carriage, cushy seats and extra legroom are of little comfort if a train is 40 minutes late.
For those without the means for private air travel but travelling too far for the train, there are always scheduled air services. In north Wales, that tends to mean Manchester or Liverpool airports, while in the south the most convenient points of departure are Bristol or Cardiff, which have been battling for Welsh custom since the start of this year. Many choose to make the journey to Bristol – and pay the Severn Bridge toll – because the English airport has a wider range of flights and, in particular, connections with Germany.
Cardiff airport chief executive Patrick Duffy admits Cardiff has a few shortcomings for business travellers, but insists that the airport’s potential for business use is there. “We want to invest in a more significant, international- standard airport,” he says. “That means two things: actually developing the airport, and attracting international airlines.
“Our success and failure depends on the public private sector in Wales and what it does to use an airport more. We need an opportunity to develop. From our perspective we’re prepared to invest significantly – about £30m to £40m – in the next five years.”
But he says the airport, owned by Abertis of Spain, cannot do it alone. “I think the public sector is going to have to get involved at some point – not to develop the airport, as that’s for us to do – but the environment around it, so there’s more demand for business travel here with inward investment,” he says. “That’s not the airport’s job. We’re here to provide a way for people to get to and from here. The challenge is to get people to understand what needs to be done, and that all the parties involved need to be heading in the same direction.”
“Airlines are looking at opportunities all the time,” says Cardiff’s business development manager Steve Hodgetts. “What can we do to make Cardiff attractive?”
“The economic arguments are absolutely compelling. No American businesspeople come into Wales by flying directly here, so what is that saying? It means they’re flying to and from Heathrow or Bristol, and it sends out the message that demand is not sufficient to open a route to Cardiff. We have to convince other people that’s not the case.”
He adds: “If you look at similar routes from Glasgow they were started with help from the Scottish Executive. Newcastle has just got a good support package for Emirates to fly from there. We need that level of commitment and support.”
One criticism frequently lobbed at Cardiff airport is that is hard to get to, particularly on public transport, which may otherwise make it more attractive to business visitors or tourists.
Duffy says: “If we want to develop that international-class airport, then it needs an environment around it that warrants that status – and that includes roads and public transport. In the long term, it is important.”
Mervyn Hamm, entrepreneur and chairman of Ramp Industries, manages a team based over Wales and south west England. He says: “We have a team of three or four individuals who travel between sites a fair bit. Because of the rising price of fuel, we try to share cars when we can.
“And if there’s room in the boot for engineering parts or raw material then we’ll use that, too, rather than send the van up. Our travel policy at the moment is based on not wasting fuel – driving conservatively to save fuel won’t make a jot of difference if you’re actually making an unnecessary journey.
“With regard to international travel we use Cardiff Airport whenever we can. Obviously, that’s not always possible – we’ve got business in areas where it doesn’t operate – so our second call is in Bristol, with Birmingham our third choice. “We’re not into video conferencing, so we try and see customers when we can,” says Hamm. “But the challenge is to only go when its necessary – you have to resist the temptation to go on a jolly.”
At present Cardiff Airport has 50 per cent of Wales’ flyers. Combine that with its 20 per cent business travel rate, and it’s a modest figure. Although Hodgetts and Duffy hint at some exciting developments for 2009, tapping into passengers across the water remains a challenge.
“Very few of our business passengers actually come from over the other side of the Severn,” says Hodgetts.
“Bristol is a pretty tough competitor with a solid network. But what we’ve already proved this year is that, with increased capacity flights to Edinburgh and Glasgow, we can recover traffic that was using EasyJet.”
“Demand must increase,” says Duffy. “If you’re to look at in terms of actual routes, there is a case for saying it’s not connected well enough to other areas. Outbound isn’t too bad as we can connect to other systems: Amsterdam, for instance. You can get to virtually anywhere in the world from there.”
“We want to be the primary point for people coming into Wales,” says Hodgetts. “That’s quite an ambition but we want to do it.”