BAGS rollin' door to door
Orlando entrepreneur readies express baggage service for Disney, cruise lines.
Bob Mervine
Staff Writer
ORLANDO -- Twenty months ago, Orlando entrepreneur Craig Mateer announced "an aggressive growth strategy" for his fledgling baggage-handling business.
Today, Mateer says his privately held Baggage Airline Guest Services Inc. -- using the acronym BAGS -- is doing "thousands" of transactions a year. He's used the time to fine-tune a system that provides airlines and hotel clients with a hassle-free, door-to-door leisure and business travel baggage handling system that meets federal government security requirements.
Mateer, who founded the 500-employee company less than two years ago, expects the addition of Walt Disney World's hotel package business and several cruise lines later this year will grow the number of transactions to 3 million to 5 million within a year. While Disney is building in the system's costs, cruise lines, hotels and convention centers will charge a fee -- typically $10 to $20 -- for a boarding pass and the luggage.
"Craig is doing what a lot of people have talked about doing," says John A. Dungan, director of global product management for privately held Arinc Inc., a 75-year-old Annapolis, Md., firm that specializes in transportation communications and systems engineering. "His principal value is to work with all the partners involved."
Arinc, whose board of directors includes representatives from major airlines, provides Mateer with customized software and hardware that allows him to view major airline schedules, print boarding cards and bag tags, and access the entire system through a secure Internet connection.
Nick Hafner, vice president of air and sea services for Miami-based Royal Caribbean Ltd., says Arinc's involvement carries some weight.
"That means travel industry companies pay a lot of attention when they hear Arinc is involved. They take their business seriously," Hafner says.
The Disney service, which kicks in May 5, "is a big deal," says Mateer. "They are the icon of service, and they set the industry standards."
Disney announced its complementary "Magical Express" program in December and is already testing it. The service, which also includes free bus transportation to and from Orlando International Airport, is provided to every traveler who books a room in a Disney-operated hotel at least through the end of 2006.
Peter Yesawich of Maitland-based Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Robinson, an agency that specializes in the travel industry, agrees: "The Disney affiliation lends credibility and more consumer confidence."
"Magical Express will provide a hassle-free experience for our guests from the airport to our hotel room door and back again," Al Weiss, president of Walt Disney World Resort, said in a recent statement. "It sets new standards for convenience, value and comfort, and we believe (it) will ... drive additional visitation to Central Florida."
Disney officials won't estimate the number of transactions it expects to provide. But with nearly 25,000 rooms operating seven nights a week, the impact for BAGS could be significant.
In addition, Mateer says, "We already have commitments from several major cruise lines." The first, he says, will be Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises.
The Jewel of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean vessel, will be the first to offer the service, on an outbound basis only, starting next week in Fort Lauderdale.
"We'll add one ship a week until we've made it ubiquitous on all but one of our 29 ships," says Hafner.
He says the lines also will add the ports in Tampa, San Juan, Puerto Rico and Port Canaveral during the process.
Servicing the cruise lines, Mateer says, requires another layer of infrastructure with different software and the capacity for satellite transmission of information while at sea.
"The hardware is on the ships," Mateer says, "so wherever the ships go, the service goes."
Travel-industry experts say Mateer's business should resonate with an industry desperate to reduce operating costs.
"This service can reduce their direct payroll costs," says Yesawich, who sees the family traveler embracing the concept, although not in a hurry. "It's a novel idea that makes a great deal of sense. But it's not been widely market-tested yet."
Hafner says a similar, but smaller service that Royal Caribbean tested in Vancouver "found very a very high acceptance rate with our customers there."
Yesawich believes the service may have some limitations.
"I don't think, generally, the business traveler is going to use it," he says. "Business travelers have an unrelenting anxiety about being separated from the tools of their business."
However, the management at McCormick Place in Chicago, the nation's largest convention center complex, is betting business travelers will embrace the system.
Matt Donaher, marketing director for the Chicago Airport System, which manages both the center and the airports, says the city will begin a soft rollout of the BAGS system in May.
The city then plans to officially launch the system in June for the National Mayors Conference. The goal, he says, is to integrate it into both O'Hare and Midway airports and hopefully partner with as many as 10 major hotels in downtown Chicago.
