BottomLine Marketing co-founder and SDSU marketing lecturer Miro Copic discusses some of the week’s top business stories with KPBS News.
Q: The summer travel season unofficially starts on Memorial Day, which was this week. But fewer people are flying or driving. How has that led to job cuts in the travel industry?
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A: In the state of California, 40% of all travel and leisure jobs have been lost since the beginning of the pandemic. Hertz is the largest rental car company in the world and they declared bankruptcy. Two-thirds of their revenue comes from rental cars at the airport. And with a 94% decline in air travel, that revenue stream went to basically zero. Boeing also announced 13,000 layoffs, about 10% of their workforce. They had no registered sales in April. So it has impacted the commercial airline industry, the automotive industry, just because no one is flying.
Q: Regional destinations from Las Vegas to SeaWorld are slowly reopening, or planning to do so soon. What will be different for visitors as these places try to get the money flowing again?
RELATED: Theme Parks Want To Reopen In July
A: Las Vegas is going to open effective June 4th. And they're being very responsible because the last thing Vegas needs is to shut down again. So they are reducing the density in the casinos. Things like nightclubs and spas that Vegas is known for, those are gonna be effectively closed. SeaWorld, Legoland and the USS Midway all announced that they had come to an agreement with an opening plan for July 1st with the county, just prior to the July 4th weekend, which will be great. What's going to happen? Similar to what's happening in Vegas. There's gonna be a lot lower density. There's gonna be social distancing 6 feet apart. People apart in the queue to get into the park. So you're gonna have a lot fewer guests.
