Cathay Pacific Profit Beats Estimates as Travel Demand Gains

Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. (293), Asia's biggest international carrier, reported annual profit that beat analyst estimates after higher passenger numbers helped mask a drop in cargo traffic.Net income in 2012 was HK$916 million ($118 million), compared with HK$5.5 billion a year earlier, the company said in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing today. The city-based carrier was expected to make a profit of HK$538.7 million based on the average of 19 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales increased 1 percent to HK$99.4 billion, it said.Chief Executive Officer John Slosar's introduction of promotional fares helped boost passenger numbers 5 percent last year while Wall Street's job cuts weighed down on premium travel. With the rise in jet fuel prices, Cathay cut costs and is paring capacity this year as Middle East carriers such as Emirates increase competition by expanding into Asia-Pacific.
"Peak seasons of summer and Christmas holidays in the second half helped boost demand,"Geoffrey Cheng, an analyst at Bank of Communications Co., said before the announcement. "Cathay is likely to see a recovery this year, especially on the long-haul travel market, as the U.S. economy is improving."The airline's shares fell 0.7 percent to HK$14.16 as of the noon trading break in Hong Kong. The stock has declined 0.4 percent this year.Cathay posted a surprise first-half loss of HK$935 million, weighed down by slower cargo demand and losses from affiliates.Singapore Airlines Ltd. (SIA), the biggest carrier in Southeast Asia, last month reported profit that missed estimates for a fifth consecutive quarter as competition pushed down fares."We have taken the right measures to deal with current challenges and will take whatever further measures are necessary should the business environment not improve," Cathay Chairman Christopher Pratt said in the statement. "The cost of fuel remains the biggest challenge."Passenger yield, including fuel surcharges, rose 1.2 percent to 67.3 Hong Kong cents last year and the airline, according to the statement. Cathay and its Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Ltd. unit filled on average 80.1 percent of its seats little changed from 80.4 percent a year earlier, according to the statement.Slosar told staff in November the carrier was facing a "very challenging year" in 2012. Cathay has said it will cut passenger capacity 1.6 percent this year to cope with slowing international travel demand. In December, Slosar said the capacity reductions are intended to accelerate replacement of the oldest Boeing Co. (BA) 747 planes.

Duluth couple shares passion for wine, travel

This is a love story. David Devere and Sara Duke are world travelers from Duluth who fell in love with France after taking a canal boat trip there in 2011.On the way, the couple also fell in love with the world of wine.The result is a new business venture, Savvy Nomad Wine Tasting & Tours, which offers wine education and also guided tours in France for a close-up look at where that wine is made.Devere and Duke met in Antarctica working at the U.S. research station in the 1990s. Duke grew up near Two Harbors. Devere is from Arizona. They have since traveled all over the world. They called the France vacation the best they have ever taken. When they returned to Duluth, they decided they wanted to continue teaching people about wine as a business and to guide them on similar trips to France.
"We were driving across North Dakota," Devere said of the couple's first discussion about the new venture. They talked about educating people in Duluth about wine and then came up with the idea of actually taking people to the places it came from."It seemed like a natural progression," Devere said.The result has been several sets of wine classes at area businesses since last fall and a regular Wednesday night wine presentation at Chester Creek Cafe.The couple is going to France again this summer — leading two canal boat trips — and are taking reservations for more trips in September 2014.The wine and travel guiding venture is added to the duties of running the small press publishing company On-Word Bound Books since 2003.
In early spring of 2010, Devere came across an article in a sailing magazine advertising a canal boat trip in France. He showed it to Duke, who agreed the trip sounded wonderful. They recruited a couple friends to join them for a fall of 2011 trip, and David set about making the plans. He reserved the boat, picked flights, bought train tickets in France, planned a few days in Paris, and found hotels for the beginning and end of the trip.And then there was the wine. Devere wanted to have a better grasp of the wine made in the regions they would visit in France, so he purchased a DVD set called "The Everyday Guide to Wine." It offered 24 lessons using six bottles of wine for each one.Knowing that going through the lessons would prove to be an expensive venture, the couple recruited friends into a wine group to help share the cost of the bottles they would try.The group met about every other week for almost a year before the trip to France.

How to Become a Travel Agent

Change is under way in the travel industry. Brick-and-mortar storefronts are becoming relics as independent consultants replace traditional travel agencies. You can thrive in this new home-based world. Knowledge, expertise and research are key. But ultimately, it's about service – at both ends of the travel dollar.How spoke with Dan Smith, the Pacific Northwest Chapter director of the National Association of Career Travel Agents, about selling travel packages, getting credentialed, finding customers and working from home.Maybe someone has a great circle of relationships and people are always coming to them and they say, "Why shouldn't I get paid for doing all this research? I like doing it, but I could be making money." A lot of people get into their 50s and say, "You know maybe I'll just start this as a part-time thing." Some are very successful at it. They can balance more than one life simultaneously. … If you have a family reunion and you have an affinity with travel, you will start talking to hotels, you will talk to airlines, resorts, maybe transportation systems.
There are some travel schools out there. I don't think that's a good place to get training necessarily. That's how a lot of people have started, but then they were able to go into a brick-and-mortar and file brochures, write tickets. There are few places to do that these days because so many brick-and-mortars are no longer available. "When I left the airline, I thought I knew travel. I knew nothing about travel," Smith said. "I knew how to get people on and off airplanes. It's a totally different world."It's learning about a place and being effective in communicating about the place. … I have a wholesale business, which means a customer and/or another travel agent will call me and say, "What do you know about Costa Rica?"
I have a guy I work with in Costa Rica. I send him a profile and budget. Here's the time frames, what the clients are thinking of doing. He will come back with an itinerary.Then I go back to the client and say, "Here is what we can do." … Part of the reason it works is because I am doing the boutique smaller properties, as opposed to the mega-properties.And when you are going to destinations, people aren't looking for the brass and glass. They want to experience a place. So I'm on both sides of the street. I am a seller and I am also a resource to the other travel agents. Then I turn around and say to somebody else, "I need information on how to get a ground operator in Naples that's not going to take advantage of people." … That's part of how we interact and support each other.

March snowstorm could snarl travel across Midwest

A late-winter storm was expected to gum up travel Tuesday as it crept slowly across the Central and Midwest U.S. before heading east later in the week, forecasters said Monday.The storm was expected to peter out by the time it hits New York and Boston later in the week, but not before it creates a mess for commuters from Upper Mississippi and Ohio River valleys eastward to the Atlantic Coast.Significant snowfall will make travel dangerous Monday night and Tuesday in the Upper Midwest, especially around major cities like Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Chicago. The Weather Channel warned that major delays were likely Tuesday at O'Hare and Midway airports.Chicago is expected to get its biggest snowfall of the season — as much as 10 inches by Tuesday evening. The National Weather Service said accumulation rates of one to two inches an hour beginning Tuesday morning would make "snow removal difficult and travel extremely dangerous."
"Consider only traveling if in an emergency," it said in issuing a winter storm warning for the city.Unseasonably warm temperatures Monday melted some of the winter's snow in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul — just in time for a new blast of winter that could drop as much as 7 inches of new snow overnight and Tuesday."I'm tired of being ready for winter. I am ready for it be spring," Barbara Eckley of Minneapolis told NBC station KARE.By Wednesday, significant accumulations were forecast for the Washington area. Major flight delays are possible at Washington-Dulles, Reagan National and possibly Baltimore-Washington International airports.
While the storm isn't yet expected to hit the Northeast hard — forecasters said they'd have a better picture later in the week — the travel delays could have a noticeable ripple effect Wednesday in Philadelphia, New York and Boston.The system has meandered across the country since it formed off the West Coast last week. It was dropping heavy snow Monday on an area stretching from northeast Montana through parts of North Dakota and Minnesota and into eastern Iowa.A foot of snow had already fallen in parts of eastern North Dakota by noon Monday, NBC station KVLY of Fargo reported. Snow-covered passing lanes and reduced visibility were expected to remain a problem into Tuesday.At least 38 traffic accidents were reported in Black Hawk County in central Iowa by 6:30 a.m., NBC station KWWL of Waterloo reported. Six to 10 more inches are possible in the region by Tuesday morning.