BROWNSVILLE — Bryant Walker wants to have a talk with the airlines.
The director of the Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport, during a discussion of the airport’s new marketing campaign, noted that some airlines not currently serving Brownsville still print “South Padre Island” on passenger tickets.
“They use the ‘South Padre Island’ name in the reservation systems, but those passengers are not departing our airport, the Brownsville South Padre Island airport,” Walker said.
That can be confusing to passengers, many of whom see “South Padre Island” on their tickets, assume they’re flying out of Brownsville only to discover they’re at the wrong airport — in the wrong city, he said.
“We get phone calls to that effect, and we get passengers in the terminal that have just gotten dropped off by a cab,” Walker said. “It’s pretty routine.”
He believes it’s a good way to talk to airlines that serve South Padre Island vacationers about offering service to the airport that’s actually closest to the Island. Brownsville South Padre Island airport is 25.8 miles from South Padre Island via State Highway 48. The shortest route from Valley International Airport is 42.5 miles via FM 510.
“I’m going to say, ‘If you do want your passenger getting as close as they can, then you should fly into the right airport.’ It’s kind of ironic that they would fly to an airport and then drive by another airport on the way to their final destination,” Walker said.
Such thoughts occupy Walker’s mind these days as he oversees what he describes as “quite an extensive strategic marketing plan.” The campaign, which kicked off late last year, includes new billboards featuring the catchphrase: “Let the journey take flight.”
“The one sector of the market that we’ve left largely untapped, despite what it might look like around Spring Break, is the leisure market,” Walker said. “We’re not accessing that or advertising for it to the degree that we should. The business market, knock on wood, is stable.”
Part of the campaign involves teaming up with the airlines themselves to share marketing costs, making marketing dollars go farther and reaching a broader market coverage in the process, he said. It’s the first time the airport has partnered with anyone on marketing, Walker said.
“That’s what we’re doing a lot of right now,” he said. “I’m getting a 100-percent match on my marketing dollars every joint venture we go into. I get into markets I didn’t get into before. We have a bigger market segment that we’re impacting now, interacting with.”
The Island is obviously a central feature of the campaign, Walker said.
“We’re definitely using the Island to market,” he said. “We’ve met with both the convention and visitors bureau and the chamber (of commerce) at the Island, and we’ve tried to tap into some of their resources and do more partnerships and teamwork stuff.”
To lure the leisure traveler, the airport will advertise in northern states and cities like Dallas and Houston, while the airport’s billboards in the Rio Grande Valley are aimed at simple brand exposure, Walker said.
“I just need everybody in the Valley to acknowledge and understand that we have an airport right here in Brownsville,” he said. “So many people I’ve heard don’t know that we even have an airport here.”
That’s ironic, considering that Brownsville’s connection to aviation is almost as old as aviation itself, Walker said.
“Fort Brown had reconnaissance aircraft that were put there in 1913,” he said. “You’re talking 10 years after the inauguration of powered flight. Ten years later you’ve got military reconnaissance aircraft based here in Brownsville.
“We’re getting a brand out there. We’re really trying to bolster this brand and create an image for the airport and for Brownsville, something that we can get behind and market and sell. The previous branding of the airport was vague enough that it was hard to nail it down, and we didn’t have a product to sell. That’s what we’ve tried to address in this marketing campaign.”
