The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) earlier this month announced a series of measures to significantly enhance the clarity of and compliance with fair market pricing policy for goods sold at airport concessionaires after a passenger complained of paying $27 for a seasonal beer.
The new policy, which covers LaGuardia (LGA), John Kennedy International (JFK) and Newark Liberty International (EWR) airports, caps all concession prices at local, off-airport “street prices” plus a maximum surcharge of 10 percent and requires concessionaires to offer lower-priced food and beverage options to provide a wider range of value for customers.
The new measures were detailed in a revised “Concessionaire Street Pricing Standards & Procedures Manual” published on the PANYNJ Aviation Department website. The revised guidelines followed a study by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) assessing a range of other products and concessionaires. Among the OIG findings was a determination that certain aspects of the previous iteration of the street pricing policy were too vague and lacked adequate specificity to enable concessionaires to know with precision what they were expected to do to comply with the policy.
The OIG concluded that the street pricing policy required revisions with greater clarity and granularity to be fully enforceable. The new measures announced by the Aviation Department and memorialized in the revised manual now provide this level of requisite specificity.
“All airport customers should rightly expect that policies which limit the pricing of food and beverages at concessions will be followed and enforced,” said Kevin O’Toole, PANYNJ chairman “And all airport customers and concessionaires should expect tough pro-active enforcement going forward now that these revised standards are in place.”
The new measures in the revised manual fall into two main categories, the first being detailed instructions for calculating product prices based on comparable area averages, dependent on the type outlet, product/ingredient quality, brand and other factors.
The Aviation Department guidelines also include steps to strengthen monitoring and compliance of the street pricing policy, and invite the public to detail instances where they feel pricing may have been exorbitant.
