Marketing called key to city airport's courting of Latinos
PHOTO/MICHAEL NOVINSON
Latinos can be counted on to patronize JetBlue beyond the sporadic warm-weather vacation, Worcester City Councilor Sarai Rivera said during a Latino leadership forum at the Beechwood Hotel Friday.
Latinos are uniquely positioned to help JetBlue succeed in Worcester, but intensive marketing will be needed to make that happen, according to a panel of Hispanic business and civic leaders.
Central Massachusetts’ Latino population can use JetBlue’s daily flights from Worcester Regional Airport to Florida - which launched Nov. 7 - not only for tourism but also to visit family and friends across Latin America. The low-cost carrier offers connecting flights from Fort Lauderdale and Orlando to 10 cities in the Caribbean, Central and South America.
Those trips could help keep flights full during the summer when snowbirds have returned to New England, said Jose Masso, Massport’s director of community relations, during a Massport-sponsored event Friday at the Beechwood Hotel.
Latinos can be counted on to patronize JetBlue beyond the sporadic warm-weather vacation, said Worcester City Councilor Sarai Rivera. They need to travel to be present for family members’ weddings, funerals and births, she said.
JetBlue has already built up considerable brand loyalty from Latinos by servicing three cities in Puerto Rico, two in the Dominican Republic and one each in Mexico and Colombia for several years, said Ivan Gois, president of La Mega Radio, which owns Hispanic-oriented radio stations in Worcester, Boston and Lowell.
Plus, the presence of Latinos in Central Massachusetts is growing both in population and spending power.
Worcester’s Latino population has grown from 25,000 in 2003 to roughly 51,000 today as Central Massachusetts’ Hispanic population has expanded beyond its traditional Puerto Rican base, according to Juan Gomez, president and CEO of Centro Las Americas, Worcester County’s largest Latino nonprofit.
Latinos in Central Massachusetts now have $15.3 billion of buying power, which has more than quintupled over the past several years, according to Rivera.
But traditional marketing strategies won’t convince Hispanics to use the airport, Gomez said. Latinos want to be “wined and dined” and form a personal relationship with the brand, he said.
Latinos still disproportionately consume traditional forms of media such as print, television and radio, Gois said, and effective campaigns reach them through those channels.
“You need to get serious about marketing,” he said. “I haven’t seen it thus far.”
Assumption College President Francesco Cesareo said greater flexibility in flight times would make it easier for parents using Worcester Regional Airport to visit their college-aged children. Some 9 percent of Assumption’s student body comes from Latin America, Cesearo said.
And Yolanda Zambrano, president of Alpha Travel, a Worcester-based travel agency, recommended that Massport make and promote arrangements with hotels in Florida for customers traveling to Latin America who miss connecting flights or who look to catch a cruise the day after their flight arrives.
In an effort to foster connections between Worcester airport and its destinations, Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce President Tim Murray announced that the airport will be hosting a trade show March 13 with hundreds of travel professionals and exhibitors from Florida.
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