For many workers, it’s just one component of the task at Cerner Corp.
North Kansas City-based fitness firm constantly sends workers to sell, install products and services.
At times, the launch of a new product could require hundreds of employees to head to the airport, expense meals and stay in hotels as they work with hospitals across the country.
But like everything else, business has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Like many painters and managers accustomed to running from home, Cerner and other Kansas City corporations have discovered new tactics for painting with consumers without boarding an airplane.
“We’ll go back and see that everyone is flying and coming to a customer’s site,” said John Peterzalek, Cerner’s Director of Customer Services and Services. “Frankly, it’s much more effective for our consumers and Cerner … I see we go out into a slightly different world than we entered.”
Cerner hasn’t stopped all business trips. But she and some other major employers in the metropolitan domain say she will most likely be mini-minimized in the coming years because they employ a combination of face-to-face and virtual work.
The Kansas City challenge is not unique: the pandemic has decimated the entire industry. But companies account for more than a portion of all traffic at Kansas City International Airport. And Kansas City is building its new $1.5 billion terminal, which will feature airline revenue, passenger tickets, rental rates and parking to pay.
“Obviously, fewer passengers and fewer flights mean it will be difficult to pay for the monetary commitment for the new terminal,” said Henry Harteveldt, an industry analyst and owner of Atmosphere Research Group. “The airport will have to re-examine that.”
Harteveldt expects the air to recover, but noted that all major airlines have made it clear that they will operate much smaller organizations in the short term.
“That definitely increases the pressure on Kansas City International Airport in terms of how are they going to pay for the terminal,” he said. “I’m sure the finance team at Kansas City International is having some sleepless nights.”
For now, airport officials say they are too involved with the new terminal. Last year, the city raised nearly $900 million in the bond market to begin construction. It will still have to raise about $600 million more, until next summer, said Justin Meyer, the city’s deputy director of aviation.
Airlines have agreed to five-year leases at the new terminal. If it opens on time in 2023, that means they’d be locked in until at least 2028.
Given pre-pandemic traffic trends, airport officials expected travelers to be charged an additional $10 based on the assistance payment for the new terminal. But local air traffic has already halved, meaning those fares may increase.
“We expect that number to rise, but it may not just be in Kansas City,” Meyer said of emerging costs.
Virtual Cerner
In an effects call in late July, Cerner executives said the reopening of the company would allow more workers to travel.
Some activities are better if done in person, Peterzalek said. But the company and its consumers have effectively transferred most of the outsourcing activities, demonstrations and open days to virtual media. In the future, he said Cerner would probably rely to the most on a hybrid style of online and in-person tasks.
While many team members have visited hospitals to launch new products in the past, those deployments are now virtual. This replacement is expected to continue long after the pandemic, he said.
Peterzalek may simply not identify potential savings, but noted that it would also help customers. For certain tasks, such as presenting or promoting products, Cerner will pay for expenses and employees. But when Cerner has a contract with a hospital requesting on-site assistance, vacations are paid through the client.
In addition to monetary expenses, the company has stored its workers for many hours restricting travel.
Cerner employs approximately 14,000 other people on several campuses in the Kansas City area. In 2018, Cerner recorded about 150,000 departures and arrivals at KCI. This means that each week, approximately 2900 Cerner workers board or disembark from a plane in Kansas City.
The corporate did not prevent the pandemic from travel, but limited them to the highest fundamental needs. Employees fly about 15% of general rates.
“We are the biggest user of this airport,” Peterzalek said. “It’s passing to pass downArray … There’s no way for our trips to be reduced one way or another.”
In interviews, other Kansas City corporations shared similar expectations, several giant KCI users said they expected an uptick in travel.
The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, the Kansas City Area Development Council and the Greater Kansas City Civic Council are recently interviewing local business leaders about their long-term aviation needs.
Tim Cowden, president and CEO of the development council, said business travel always lags in a recovering market. He noted that airlines have been increasing capacity here over the summer as vacationers grow more comfortable flying.
But the pandemic is an exclusive crisis, so it’s hard to wait exactly when corporations will need to put their workers back on planes.
“My feeling is that the business network will adopt a planned and prudent technique to allow its affiliates to return to the sky,” Cowden said. “But there’s no doubt we’re going to fly to Kansas. So it’s only a matter of time before we take control of the planes to call consumers and do business.”
Funding for a new airport
So far, the pandemic has not led the city to make primary adjustments to the budget or structure schedule of the new terminal.
Meyer, who leads marketing efforts at KCI, does not expect air traffic for this year or even by 2021. Traffic at the airport reached almost 12 million passengers last year. But Meyer expects to end 2020 with 5.1 to 5.2 million passengers, assuming KCI can contain about 50% of its overall passenger traffic for the rest of the year.
Coronavirus is not the first surprise on the market. Meyer said it took years for traffic levels to recover after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Similarly, KCI traffic did not fully recover from the Great Recession until 2017, he said.
For now, he thinks smaller airports have more to worry about. For example, Delta recently suspended all service to Lincoln, Nebraska — one of only two airlines serving that small airport just outside of Omaha.
To date, Air Canada is the airline that left KCI, temporarily postponing nonstop service to Toronto.
“We hope things are smaller,” Meyer said. “But I think Kansas City is in a better position for recovery than some of the smaller regional airports.”
Southwest Airlines, KCI’s market leader and principal proponent of the new terminal, said he expects the business to resume in the long run. Meanwhile, business leaders say they are working with Kansas City companies to assess their travel and post-pandemic wishes.
“We who, as we leave the pandemic, will again call for air travel,” Southwest spokesman Dan Landson said in a statement. “We are very pleased that the allocation of KCI is carried out according to the schedule and the budget.”
There are already symptoms of a mild recovery on business trips. Meyer said the number of accelerated flyers filtering systems like TSA PreCheck, which is basically used through common business travelers, is higher at faster rates than KCI steering wheels in general.
While the pandemic has shaken the industry, Meyer believes investment for the new terminal will run its course. The town has a year to get more investment. And Meyer noted that investors are attracted by the relative safety of airport government bonds.
“There is a single-stop airport that has ever been in breach of a bonding factor or debt payment,” he said. “Airport bonds and airport projects have traditionally been one of the safest investments.”
That’s traditionally true,” said Harteveldt, who runs the San Francisco study company. But the airline industry has never suffered from such a pandemic, he said.
A bankruptcy or dissolution of one of the country’s major airlines would damage all advertising airports. But Harteveldt believes the big four airlines will be the ones that will go through the crisis.
However, airports deserve to think differently about long-term travel needs. He said there was “no doubt” that corporations will migrate some trips to long-term virtual meetings after achieving what they can have imaginable, whether in terms of productivity or reduced charges.
“There’s going to be changes, ” he said.
When will travel rebound?
Much of the travel uptick will depend on the fitness of the economy and the progression of a vaccine and a remedy for coronavirus. Sometimes it will take airlines at least 3 years to get back to 2019 levels, Harteveldt said.
In a survey of 2500 readers, his company found that about a third of commercial readers did not expect to return to the road until January 2021 or later. In a separate survey of business managers conducted in July, 78% said they would no longer allow domestic use until a vaccine is available.
“There’s a huge amount of uncertainty,” he said. “And many decisions about when business travelers take the road are the duty of business travelers. It’s up to their employers.”
Still, he said corporations see the price in face-to-face meetings. And video conferencing is an imperfect replacement.
“They miss the verbal exchange of the sidebar, the verbal exchanges that take place outside the doors of the formal assembly itself: the verbal exchange with a drink at the end of the day or the proverbial verbal exchange on the water source a pause in the assembly,” he said.
Most employers are limited to the maximum critical needs: those in the medical table or maintenance technicians, for example.
“Nobody told us we didn’t think we’d do it again,” said Joe Curtis, senior vice president of business at Mission-based Acendas Travel. “At this point, everyone hopes to get back on the road.”
His company, which handles business arrangements across the United States, conducts only about 20% of its normal operations. Curtis said some businessmen were making longer trips to avoid flying.
In addition to whether workers can fly or not, corporations should also consider protection commands on things like hotel scraps and meals in places to eat. And they will have to monitor infection rates in various cities and states, weighing quarantine regulations on their bases and destinations.
Curtis said consumers hoped to travel again, but that he could be fine in 2021 before doing so largely.
“It will be a comeback, ” he said.
Carlos Barragán, a spouse of Healthmate International of Lenexa, has flown into coronavirus hot spots in recent months. Your company sells non-public protective devices, such as masks, and relies on face-to-face meetings to do so.
The Kansas City advertising airport largely empty and quiet, he said. For months, he saw solo travelers more often who, he said, were flying for work. But now, he says, he sees more families who he thinks are destined for vacation.
Sometimes it feels safe, away from other passengers. At other times, he is involved in other travelers and airlines taking the risk of being in serious enough shape.
“The last flight I took lasted 3 hours,” said Barragán, who was planning to be quarantined after returning from Washington state. “So I stayed in the cabin with two hundred other people for 3 hours.
A lasting journey
The Kansas City Group of Architecture, Design and Engineering Companies is a user of KCI.
Aside from conferences and conventions, employees fly to develop relationships and win contracts. Once they start a project, teams generally fly back and forth to check on progress and oversee work.
Some of those trips continue, but at Black-Veatch, top critical travel is approved, said John Johnson, vice president of Environment, Safety, Health and Safety.
Currently, the corporate only allows 10 to 12 trips a week, he said. This is below nearly 1,000 per week before the pandemic. Black-Veatch employs about 10,000 people in total, adding nearly 3,000 in Kansas City.
“It’s a pretty difficult process,” he said, noting that each and every one of them demands the approval of a president of the line of advertising and attention to local infection rates.
Most recent travelers make a stopover at active allocation sites, as many consumers are not yet in a position to receive those who scale, Johnson said. That will eventually change, you think. And face-to-face meetings will be vital to creating new businesses.
But the frequency will decrease.
“I think there are savings and power only in Black and Veatch,” he says. “These classes are likely to remain in effect for some time.”
The Burns and McDonnell competition has a view percentage.
Renita Mollman, Executive Director, said face-to-face meetings and occasions are a key component of the company’s culture. And finally, leaders hope to reactivate those activities. But it’s clear that some trips, such as visitor visits, may be reduced in the future.
“It can be 20% of the time an assembly is replaced with a video call,” he says. “I think we’ll replace a little in the future, even after COVID.”
Mollman expects business and recreational activities to recover widely in Kansas City and across the country, even if it takes a few years.
Burns and McDonnell already have higher volume.
Prior to the pandemic, the company booked up to 4,000 air travel depending on the month. That was reduced to a hundred or two hundred, consistent with a month’s travel this spring, Mollman said.
Currently, approximately 500 to 600 workers are issued e-books each month.
“We’re starting to see a new slope,” he says. “So that’s a smart thing to do.”
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