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The following is excerpted from the business news outlet, Bloomberg. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
When members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints return from missionary work, they’re usually greeted at the airport by their entire family, sometimes with professionally made ‘Welcome Home’ banners, balloons, horns and even photographers.
In Salt Lake City — headquarters of the Mormon church — those crowds have clogged up the waiting and baggage-claim areas and parking lots at Salt Lake City International Airport, where tens of thousands of church members head out and come back from missions that can last two years. It’s become a problem for an airport that has gained a reputation as being crowded and difficult to traverse at a time when the region’s population is swelling.
So when airport officials began to design a $3.6 billion renovation, they included a new meet-and-greet reception area where missionaries and their families can gather away from the rest of the traveling public. The space can be used for military homecomings and other types of families who want to welcome back loved ones. Financing of the airport renovation continued Wednesday, when the city sold about $859 million of revenue bonds.
“Obviously the church probably represents the largest single institutional travel base,” Bill Wyatt, executive director of the Salt Lake City department of airports, said in an interview. “They have their own travel office who we talk with on a regular basis. In that sense for the airport, they’re like any other really large institutional travel entity, you’re always going to be interested in what they’re doing, what they’re thinking and how we can serve them.”
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.