By Napoleon T. Butic, CEO, TroutPayment Systems
Today the Cy Fair Chamber ofCommerce held the Business to Business Expo at the Houston Northwest Forest Conference center, which gave local businesses the opportunity to showcase their businesses in a mini tradeshow format within the monthly lunch meeting.
Some notable businesses on display were Next Level Urgent Care, Evielutions Design, and Community ImpactMagazine, whom I have gotten to know through the chamber.
Our keynote speaker today was Jarret Simmons, Asst. Director of Planning for the Houston Airport System. I was eager to hear him speak, as I have seen numerous airport related RFP’s on the news wires in the past months. As an enterprising business owner, I salivate at the possibility of winning the merchant services contract for even one airport parking lot or some of the many retailers selling to a captive audience. But, I digress.
Houston is a hotbed of economic activity and that is being reflected in the Houston airport systems. Bush (IAH) handles roughly 40 million passengers a year and Hobby (HOU) has roughly 11 million. Figures were not available for Ellington, but there’s a tremendous potential for that airport which I will address shortly. Altogether, the airport systems have a direct output that exceeds $8.6 billion per annum, and direct employment impact exceeds 47,000 jobs.
Much of Mr. Simmons presentation focused on Hobby airport, which is being reconfigured from a purely domestic airport, to become an international airport. There will be a $156 million invested for the construction of an international terminal, with a projected payoff of 10,000 jobs across the Houston area and an economic impact of $1.6 billion. Potential international destinations are focused primarily on direct flights to Mexico, Central, and South America.
Houston, in other words, would be the nation’s hub to destinations south of the border and vice versa. The possibilities for commerce directly and indirectly tied to this long term plans for Hobby and Bush are astounding, but may be completely dwarfed by what is in store for Ellington Field.
Houston is not only the energy capital of the world, but it’s also known as Space City. Plans are being drawn up for an Ellington Spaceport, that’s right an airport for “space planes.” This is different from the vertical rockets seen at Cape Canaveral, these are rocket planes that take off and land like normal planes except that they can go into space and make it from Houston to Tokyo in less time than it takes to drive from Houston to Dallas.
Enclosed is a video about the Houston Spaceport, complete with artists’ rendering of the space crafts, airport design, and it even has cool Transformers music in the background. Trout Payment Systems is a merchant services provider focused on hooking Houston area businesses up with the best deals and service on debit/credit card processing. For more information visit troutpays.com or like our Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/TroutPaymentSystems
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