Spirit Airlines lapses daily service to St Thomas effective Sept 2, 2008

One of my guests pointed this out to me as he was booking flights for next New Years coming in here. Quite a few of my guests come SPIRIT as it has fairly good connections and prices when you are getting a group down here.
Effective Sept 2, 2008 they will only be flying one flight a week from Fort Lauderdale (connecting on from wherever they come from) into STT. This will be on a Saturday. This will cut the cheaper flights into the area, as well as make less seats available. If you are planning on using Spirit to come down here next season, my advice is to book early!
I have been tossing this around in my head for awhile, and I think that this step makes the following an even better idea.
Most people want to start a charter on a Saturday or Sunday.
I think I am going to start working my charters WHEN they take place on a Saturday to Saturday, so guests board after 4 PM. Departure the next Saturday will be before 10 AM. The benefits of this are:
Whatever airline you are coming in on, you can generally get into Tortola by late afternoon, either straight into Beef or by ferry from St Thomas. Then you have to find a hotel room for the night, and that is problematic. and expensive. Our selection is not wonderful, and quite frankly, it is just a pain for the guests to load everyone into taxi's to wander around looking for meals late at night when the only thing open in Bobbys and then repeat the tiresome procedure to get to the boat the next morning.
The down side on this is that you lose about 4 hours of your week long charter. The other down side is on back to backs, my crew does not get even 24 hours, although, I could adjust our services somewhat so we put the boat on a dock and the guests go out to dinner and breakfast at the marina instead, (which they would have had to do if they were staying in a hotel room anyways)

I have had more and more requests from guests saying that next time, they want to just get off the plane and get on the boat. They do not want to do the hotel stays, so I am actively looking for a way to accomodate this. Spirit going down to one flight a week has made me think harder on this. When you come in after three in the afternoon to St Thomas, I often suggest the guests buy the cab/ferry combo from Smiths Ferry which will have a cab driver pick them up, and the ferry will wait for them if need be. Then they are almost guaranteed to get to Tortola, unless the airlines are REALLY delayed.
The cost of coming into Beef Island is going up and up. More people are coming into St Thomas. I think that if I went to something like above the thing to do would be to move the boat down to the marinas in West End to pick up guests. Nicer then the smells like pee inner Road Harbor marinas.

Anyways, all my guests, I have now thrown this out for some INPUT and I REALLY NEED and WANT the input so I can figure out what is best for us, our guests and our business, so help me out here!