Holiday airfares climb higher

Many fliers will pay more — sometimes half as much more — for airline tickets this holiday season.
On some routes, fares are up to 59 percent higher than last year for travel before Thanksgiving and up to 40 percent higher before Christmas, according to an analysis by travel site FareCompare.com.

"Domestic airfares hit bottom in May 2009, were relatively low for Thanksgiving last year and now have crept up," says Rick Seaney, president of FareCompare.com.

The reason: Consumers who stopped flying during the recession are taking to the air, and airlines have reduced the number of seats available in the last few years to cut costs, Seaney says.

Overall, FareCompare says, domestic airfares are up an average of 17 percent for travel late this month, late December and early January over a year ago. That analysis was of fares among 50 cities. Many popular routes are costlier to fly, Seaney says.

Fares for popular flights analyzed

At USA TODAY 's request, FareCompare analyzed the cheapest nonstop coach fares on 10 popular domestic routes connecting to such major hubs as Atlanta,
Dallas, New York and Los Angeles. The fares were valid Nov. 1 for flights departing one day before Thanksgiving and two days before Christmas.

On Nov. 1, the cheapest nonstop, round-trip ticket between Boston and Minneapolis was $859 for a Nov. 24 departure and a Nov. 28 return. That price on Delta Air Lines was 59 percent more expensive than for the same days last year.

It was also 59 percent more expensive on Nov. 1 to fly between Philadelphia and Orlando, departing Nov. 24 and returning Nov. 28. US Airways and AirTran Airways were charging $522 for the cheapest nonstop ticket, compared with $328 last year.

For all 10 routes analyzed by FareCompare.com, the cheapest nonstop, round-trip ticket for Thanksgiving travel was higher than last year. The price was at least 13 percent more on nine routes.

Ticket prices for Christmas travel also are more expensive on all 10 routes.

Orbitz, the giant online travel agent, also reports more expensive holiday fares. It analyzed three major routes — New York-Los Angeles, New York-San Francisco and Chicago-San Francisco — and found average airfares for tickets booked through Oct. 1 were up to 30 percent higher for travel during the upcoming Christmas and New Year's season.

Orbitz says the busiest days to fly during the Christmas season will be Dec. 23 and Dec. 26, and the lightest days will be Dec. 24 and Dec. 31.

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Recession radically alters shopping habits

NEW YORK — Layaway, once the province of the poor, has gone mainstream. At the Mall of America in Minnesota, shoppers dart in for just one or two things. In New York, socialites do the unthinkable: They wear the same ball gown twice.
During the Great Recession, people made drastic changes in how they spent their money. They stopped treating credit cards as cash. They learned to save and learned to wait.

Now the recession is over, at least technically, and the economy is growing again, at least a little. But many changes in spending habits that most Americans first saw as temporary have taken hold, perhaps for good, some economists say.

This is the reality of the new American consumer — focused, cautious and tactical.

In Jacksonville, Fla., Bernie Decelles and his wife both have jobs and own their home. They recognize that the economy is still fragile, though, and that they work in industries still struggling. They scrutinize every purchase they make.

"It used to be if we saw something, and liked it, we bought it," said Decelles, a salesman for a company that makes storage equipment. "Nowadays, no way."

In dozens of interviews nationwide with shoppers, retailers, manufacturers, economists and analysts, The Associated Press identified key changes in consumer behavior that have endured after the recession. They include:

• Americans are buying brands and shopping at stores that they shunned before. They are trying more store-brand products for things such as detergent and beer. Goodwill and consignment shops are attracting customers across the income spectrum. And people are putting big-ticket items on layaway rather than whipping out charge cards.

• Consumers are taking a surgical approach to shopping, buying only what they need, when they need it. Pantries are no longer filled with weeks' worth of food, nor closets with clothes bought seasons in advance. Shoppers are visiting fewer stores, traditional and online, and getting only what's on their shopping lists.

• The wealthy are spending again, but their behavior is much like everyone else's. They are buying more timeless and classic goods: watches and handbags that won't go out of style quickly. They are even — gasp! — recycling some of their most expensive clothes and wearing them twice.

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Next up: Andrew Kintz

Title/company: Managing director, SunTrust Sports & Entertainment Specialty Group
Age: 34

How many people report to him: 12 staff members in Nashville and Atlanta who handle all the financial needs of musicians, their assets, mortgages, their bank accounts and career financing

Background: Began as a commercial lender in Atlanta but thought wealth management might be more interesting, because of dealing with all aspects of a client's life, from who is going to inherit the family business to how to expand. "It was so much more exciting than what I was doing."

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The company helped pay for his training, as well as his executive MBA at the University of Georgia.

What really worked for him: He picked an internal mentor at the company, Thomas Carroll, who later ended up picking him for his current job.

How he handles supervising people older and more experienced: "I'm here to fight all the internal battles. They need someone who knows all the ins and outs of the organization. If they're having trouble closing on a mortgage in Texas, they need someone who can make that happen in the organization."

Drawbacks: Working six days per week and many evenings going to social events. "It takes a person with a special mindset. You have to have a spouse who has bought into it. … I was an English major. I haven't read a book since vacation."

What he likes about the job: He sometimes can't believe he gets the access to the great musicians he does. When he's backstage at the Ryman Auditorium, visiting clients, he tells himself: "I can't believe this has happened."

When not at work: Hikes at Percy Warner Park with his wife or plays with his two children

— NAOMI SNYDER

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Diverse fan base helps CMA in time of change

In August, Steve Moore formally took over as chief executive officer of the Country Music Association, charged with leading the genre's biggest trade organization in an era of declining music profits.
Moore is a music industry veteran who moved to Nashville more than 25 years ago to become the first executive director of Starwood Amphitheatre, the former outdoor concert venue in Antioch. He has worked as a concert promoter and booker ever since, joining AEG, the world's largest concert promotion, special events and touring company, seven years ago.

Moore joined the CMA board of directors two decades ago and became chairman of the 6,000-member group in 2009. For the time being, Moore will continue serving in a dual role as CMA's chief executive and as an AEG executive, but he expects to formally resign from AEG at year-end to join CMA full time.

Moore spoke with Tennessean music business reporter Anita Wadhwani in advance of the CMA awards later this week.

What does the audience for country music look like now, and how has that changed over past decade or more?

It has changed, and it continues to change. The good news about the country consumer is that he could be from 9 to 90 years old.

From a demographic perspective, it probably encompasses the entire spectrum of the population. From a psychographic perspective, it's fragmented and artist centric. Taylor Swift, as popular as she is, is heavily popular with a certain demographic — that is, a younger male and female group.

You've got other artists like Brad Paisley who appeal to a different sector. And so would Keith Urban and Brooks & Dunn and Carrie Underwood. The beauty of the format, if you look at our top 10 artists, they appeal to a different demographic as well as different psychographic.

That gives us more breadth of exposure and more depth to the fan base than other typical formats.

Since the genre has such a diverse fan base, what are the challenges in matching that audience with corporate sponsors? How do those conversations work?

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Hospitals reach out to suburbs for outpatient dollars

Nashville-area hospitals are adding more services closer to where people live, hoping to attract better-paying, commercially insured patients — as well as provide basic care and medical tests in settings that don't require an overnight stay.
After taking a pause on construction amid a slower economy, hospitals here are once again starting to invest in outpatient services — often in suburban settings — to bring medical tests and minor surgeries to the places where many people live.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center recently revealed plans for a $200 million, 500,000-square-foot outpatient services campus in Franklin that will consolidate some noncritical services under a single roof. It's all designed to capture market share in one of the nation's wealthier counties and build brand loyalty.

Rival TriStar Health System wants to set up a satellite emergency department of its Centennial Medical Center in Spring Hill. It would offer diagnostic services,
X-rays, ultrasounds and CT scans 24 hours a day.

In recent years, Saint Thomas Health Services has been expanding its presence in Williamson County, including by opening an outpatient rehabilitation clinic in Cool Springs last year.

The outpatient boom is part of a national trend. In the past two years, hospital outpatient care has accounted for the most growth in health-care spending for the typical American family of four, according to actuarial consulting firm Milliman. From 2009 to 2010, it rose to 17.1 percent of total costs, outpacing growth in other categories such as inpatient care, physician services and prescription drugs.

Another study by McKinsey & Co. suggests outpatient care accounts for 40 percent or more of U.S. health system spending, with same-day hospital care the fastest-growing part of that. Overall, outpatient spending was expected to be about $163 billion this year.

"Typically, hospital companies place their assets in markets that are growing," said Frank Morgan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets in Brentwood. "You want to put your business in high-growth markets, places that have a strong base of residents with insurance."

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After election, market faces rare trifecta

NEW YORK — Next year will be a year unlike any other for the stock market.
The Republican takeover of the House on Tuesday means Wall Street will be contending with three situations in 2011 that drive stock prices:

• The year before a president faces re-election.

• The year after a president has lost control of Congress.

• The second year of a fragile economic expansion.

The market often behaves a certain way in each of those situations, but history isn't helpful now because investors have never faced this trifecta. What's clear is that what happens in Washington will be watched even more closely by investors next year.

"This election is more important than the average one because of all of the economic and policy issues that remain uncertain," said Robert Doll, the chief investment strategist at BlackRock, an investing firm with $3.4 trillion in assets under management.

Any mishandling of the economy by politicians will mean that "the fragile economic recovery we have is going to be hit over the head, and we would have to think about a double-dip recession all over again," Doll said.

On Day One after the mid-term elections, the Dow went up. The closely watched index closed at 11,215.13 on Wednesday, a high for the year after the Federal Reserve announced that it plans to buy
$600 billion in Treasurys to stimulate the economy.

Looking ahead, here are three situations coinciding next year and how they could affect the stock market in the long run:

THE YEAR BEFORE A PRESIDENT RUNS FOR ELECTION:

Since 1945, the Dow Jones industrial average has gained an average of 19 percent the year before a sitting president runs. That's more than double the 7.9 percent average annual gain during the same period. If you take out the 10 years when the president was running, the average gain drops to only 5.8 percent.

No one has been able to prove why this happens. One theory is that the president pushes through politically popular spending measures to help his re-election. But that doesn't explain why the market also tends to rise in the third year of a president's second term. The Dow rose 25.2 percent, for example, in 1999, the third year of President Bill Clinton's second term. Since 1902 the Dow has gained, on average,
13.7 percent in the third year of a president's first term and 10.9 percent in the third year of a president's second term.

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GM to sell $13 billion in upcoming IPO

SAN FRANCISCO — Setting the stage for its long-awaited return as a public company, General Motors Co. said Wednesday it will sell $10 billion in common stock and another $3 billion in preferred shares in the open market later this month.
GM said it expects to offer 365 million common shares at a price between $26 to $29 each. Another 60 million in series B mandatory convertible junior preferred stock will be included in the deal.

The underwriters also will have the option to buy up to an additional 54.75 million common shares from shareholders and 9 million shares of preferred stock from the company to cover over-allotments.

GM also predicted a third-quarter profit of between $1.9 billion and $2.1 billion with sales of about $34 billion.

Those numbers would mark a dramatic improvement from the third quarter a year ago when GM, fresh out of bankruptcy, reported a loss of $1.15 billion on net revenue of $26.35 billion.

"We are extremely pleased with the level of progress the company is making," GM Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said. "We will deliver a solid and profitable first year post-bankruptcy, and we are continuing to improve our balance sheet and, most importantly, the quality of our vehicles."

Looking ahead, the Detroit-based automaker said it sees more profits in the fourth quarter as well, though the earnings likely won't be quite as strong as they were in the first three quarters of the year.

GM is slated to post its detailed third-quarter results next Wednesday.

Earlier Wednesday, GM reported a 3.5 percent jump in October U.S. sales to 183,759 cars and trucks. GM's four remaining brands — GMC, Cadillac, Chevy and Buick — have increased their sales by 22 percent this year, while the industry has only risen about 10.5 percent year-to-date.

"It would have been more advantageous had GM logged more solid quarterly earnings like this one before it went public," said Michelle Krebs, an Edmunds.com analyst. "But there's a push by GM and from other places — including the federal government — to have GM go public and get the government out of its business."

GM is expected to begin its IPO road show this week, price its share offering on Nov. 17 and begin trading in New York and Toronto the following day.

Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs & Co., Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities and RBC Capital Markets will serve as the joint book-running managers for the deal.

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