Word: amsterdams
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Philly, your hometown. You can really help support a character if you understand the setting. So for that reason I generally write about Philadelphia. My experience is that people extrapolate it. If you write specifically enough, they extrapolate it to their hometown, wherever that is, even if it's Amsterdam. By the same token, if you don't write specifically enough and you have generic Anywhere U.S.A., then nobody feels anything. The whole bottom drops out of the story...
Still, BA sees a huge gap in the market. "It's for people who recognize that transatlantic travel is something you want to do in other than economy class," says Dale Moss, OpenSkies' effervescent managing director. Business-class flyers to Amsterdam and Paris pay as much as $8,000 round-trip on legacy carriers such as KLM and Northwest. For that money, you get to board first; then you wait for the other 200 passengers to crowd in after you. Asks Moss: "Would you rather be on an airplane that has two-by-two seating that takes, what, 15 minutes...
...share space with wailing babies and tour groups. For road warriors, this concept is a no-brainer. "It was a third the price and at least three times the experience, an inverse proportion," notes Mary Egan of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a recent OpenSkies passenger to Amsterdam...
...targeting that segment has failed before, notably in London. Indeed, BA and American Airlines used price-cutting and other tactics to help shoot down three business-class-only carriers. Nor will the incumbents in Amsterdam fail to react. KLM and Northwest have already slashed business-class fares...
...Amsterdam and Paris, business passengers make up 65% to 70% of the traffic, a percentage that works for OpenSkies and points to opportunities in other business centers like Frankfurt and Milan--if BA gives the airline enough support. BCG's Egan, a consumer-products specialist, says that consumer awareness of OpenSkies is limited and that as a boutique brand in a large company, it is always vulnerable. "All my clients have little brands like this. But the problem is, Can you keep incubating them...