Disney eliminating magical express9/1/2023 ![]() ![]() The discounts were not attracting onsite Guests but were hurting revenue. ![]() how much Guests spend in each occupied room) flatlined. Even worse, the important Per Room Guest Spending (PRGS) (i.e. Despite these discounts, occupancy remain stubbornly low. Ultimately, DME is costing Disney more than it's worth and you, the WDW vacationer, are going to pay the price.ĭuring the years that followed, Disney tried to increase occupancy by offering discounts. Besides, even if occupancy drops a bit, the cost of providing DME to all hotel Guests is expected to be greater than revenue lost due to a modest decrease in hotel occupancy. Why not get rid of DME?īy eliminating DME, Disney might lose bookings but some of those lost bookings will be filled by other Guests, Guests who had been unable to get the rooms they wanted due to high occupancy. Indeed, despite hotel price increases of over 5%, PRGS increased by only 2.3% in 2019, the lowest since the Great Recession of 2009.ĭME no longer seemed to be needed to fill rooms, while it also no longer was an effective tool for capturing onsite vacation dollars. With transportation being easier and cheaper, Guests were leaving the "Disney Bubble", meaning Disney was capturing less of their vacation dollars. Third-party services such as Uber created a second issue. From corporate Disney's perspective, the hotels were "full" in 2019. Disney's corporate leadership reiterated this point during several earnings calls. Increasing occupancy becomes nearly impossible. Check-out dates don't line up with check-in dates. For those who might be unfamiliar with how hotel bookings work, once room occupancy reaches levels such as these, it becomes difficult to fill additional rooms. DME was a major winner for corporate Disney.īy 2019, annual hotel occupancy was over 90%. From 2006 to 2008, hotel occupancy jumped to an incredible 89% while PRGS increased 13.1.%. With hotel occupancy and PRGS stuck in a rut, anything was worth a try.Īs it turned out, DME succeeded beyond all expectations. By staying onsite without alternate means of transportation, perhaps these Guests would spend all their vacation dollars at WDW. Maybe if Disney offered free airport transportation, more Guests would stay onsite. In an attempt to solve these duel problems, Disney created Disney's Magical Express (DME) in 2005. Despite these discounts, occupancy remained stubbornly low. This was a historically bad number for WDW, unprecedented really.ĭuring the years that followed, Disney tried to increase occupancy by offering discounts. Hotel occupancy remained high and corporate Disney built more hotels to meet ever increasing demand.ĩ/11 changed everything. Throughout the first 30 years of Walt Disney World's (WDW) existence, WDW Guests paid for their own transportation from Orlando International Airport to WDW. ![]()
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