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CORPORATE CASE STUDY:
Port of Seattle flourishes despite multiple demands As terror alerts continue across the US, the Port of Seattle's public affairs team strives to keep passengers and cargo moving smoothly through its air and seaports.
By Alvin Hattal
(Published in PR Week)
While the nation's weeks-long orange alert last month intensified interest in how US ports cope during emergencies, one of the biggest took it in stride. At the thriving Port of Seattle, which includes the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac) and the Seattle Seaport, it was seemingly business as usual, thanks to its 19-member public affairs staff. Behind the well-constructed facade, however, the inner workings at Port of Seattle are slightly less seamless.
Beneath the surface, it’s another story. In the ceaseless job of keeping more than 70,000 passengers moving efficiently and calmly through Sea-Tac every day—that’s more than 26 million a year in an airport designed to serve 25 million—two-hour processing had already become routine there, as at other airports. Now there’s also fingerprint scanning, digital mug photos, and the need to get the right stamps on passengers’ passports. Frequent security alerts since 9/11 add to the confusion by raising the sensitivity level of passengers, compounding the normal fear of flying by some and challenging the Port’s public affairs staff in several critical ways.
As the Port’s public affairs director, Lynn Lampe, says, “Our primary challenges are to maintain an ongoing smooth movement of passengers and cargo in the face of security alerts and to provide accurate, up-to-the-minute travel and business information to our customers and the public in general.”
There have been scares, says Terri-Ann Betancourt, Lampe’s assistant PA director for Sea-Tac. “But we’ve not had any real threats.”
More than 400,000 metric tons of air cargo also move through Sea-Tac every year. A major gateway to the Far East and beyond, the 30-year-old airport is a tempting target for terrorists.
In the midst of all this, the airport, which is the 15th largest in the US, is in the midst of a $4.2-billion capital improvement that can only be described as a sea/air change. It will add the capacity needed to serve a growing region whose economy is increasingly intertwined with international markets.
Maintaining confidence On the one hand, the department needs to try to keep travelers calm and reassured about their safety, as well as patient and confident about the facility and its management.
On the other, it must also cope with concessionaires and others who face increasing operation costs. One recent development, for example, will require airlines to pay a larger share of the airport’s budget, but Port officials are also counting on nonairline revenue from parking, food, books and gifts.
“One of the big, major things for us at the airport,” says Betancourt, “is providing accurate, up-to-date, valuable traveler information, and we spend a good deal of money doing that every year through bulletins and information on our Web site [portseattle.org] and in the media.” In fact, the site is a veritable tourist center for anyone who cares to navigate its myriad pathways.
In November the Seattle Port Commission, the Port’s policy arm, adopted a $740-million capital investment plan to improve the Port, among other things. And in recent weeks the airport revised its agreement with airlines that gave Port managers more control over nearly all airport operations.
According to Seattle Times reporter J. Martin McOmber, “The new contract culminates years of planning and reflects a nationwide power shift between major airports and the once-dominant airlines.”
The shift in thinking, says McOmber, underpins many changes at Sea-Tac. The terminal expansion, now nearing completion, includes improvements to the parking garage, for example. It accounts for a fifth of the airport’s income, so PA has been quick to ask for more reliable signs showing which floors have empty stalls.
“As the industry has continued to change, it has become more and more clear that the dependence airports had on airlines absolutely needed to be broken,” says Gina Marie Lindsey, Sea-Tac’s managing director, the Times reported.
Containers and cruises The seaport’s challenges are different, but they’re heightened by the extensive, new Maritime Transportation Security Act. Ports or facilities that fail to meet the guidelines based in part on detailed plans from port directors, as well as from other officials, including the captains of 10,000 ships that use US ports, could be shut down, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Seattle’s cruise-ship traffic is booming. The Port projects a 40% jump for its cruise business this year to more than 400,000 passengers, including some 250,000 passengers for weeklong trips to Alaska. Its two cruise terminals will handle 140 sailings in 2004, up from 95 last year.
To accommodate for that increase, the Port has just launched a $1.2-million construction project. The job is to fix broken pilings, add canopies to shelter passengers from rain and sun, and improve the nine-month-old cruise-ship terminal’s security.
David Schaefer, Lampe’s assistant PA director for the seaport, attributes the rise in the Port’s cruise business to its investments in recent years to its marine terminals and road and railway infrastructure. He also cites the efficiency of terminal operations and to strong relationships with shippers.
“The cruise business here, which is primarily through the inner passage to Alaska, is only about five years old,” adds Shaefer, who says, “It’s the second or third most popular cruise destination in the world.”
The 92-year-old Port also handles thousands of cargo containers that ship in and out every day.
“We have intense competition from Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Tacoma, and Vancouver, especially for the growing Asian ports,” Schaefer says, “So we’re continually trying to become more efficient.”
So far, the Port must have been doing it right: More than 1,200 shippers surveyed by Marine Digest over several months late last year ranked it No. 1 in service among the 361 US ports.
To help achieve that level of performance, says Lampe, “We have a budget process that starts in August in which we target our major projects for the ensuing year, along with budget proposals, which I then take to the Port’s administration office for funding. In January we refine those goals and agendas and then, throughout the year, we have a monthly review of our progress in meeting those goals. We also start each week with a review and look ahead at anything that was unforeseen.
“One very recent example,” Lampe explains, “was how to deal with the ban on meat export. We created a media plan, focused on the messages we needed to get out, tried to anticipate likely questions we’d get, selected a spokesperson for it, and determined the vehicles to use to get the information out.”
Specifically, says Lampe, “Our communication objective is to explain the impact of the ‘mad cow’ disease on beef exports at the Port of Seattle. Our audience, obviously, is the local media and, through them, the general public. Our strategy is to be responsive, rather than proactive. We deliver our messages and respond to media inquiries.”
The PA staff maintains regular, close contact with the top brass: Lampe meets every week with the Port’s CEO, Mic Dinsmore. And both Betancourt and Schaefer, meet with the managing directors of their respective divisions.
The Port of Seattle’s top-to-bottom upgrading, which was begun 4-1/2 years ago, is scheduled to be completed in 2010. Based on its record to date, the public affairs staff seems ready.
PR contacts
Director, public affairs Lynn Lampe
Assistant director, aviation Terri-Ann Betancourt
Assistant director, seaport David Schaefer
Media contact, Sea-Tac Airport Bob Parker
Media contact, Seaport/International Mick Shultz RETURN TO INDEX (on the home page)
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