They are a bit higher, sure; but there is still quite a bit of competition inside the airport: surely, one of those vendors would defect to get a ton of surplus business... unless they are illegally colluding; so, we should expect most of the floor in pricing is coming from some external shared pricing irregularity (aka, the sky-high rents).
A big problem is that it often isn't a free market. Joe The Sandwich Guy can't just randomly decide to open up a store inside the airport. There's a limited amount of space, a lease can easily last a decade, and any that come up are usually granted rather than auctioned.
The airport is actively trying to provide a varied selection of products, which inherently means competition is limited: someone complaining about the price of a turkey sandwich isn't going to get a Big Mac solely because it is a few dollars cheaper.
All of this is often made even worse because they aren't actually different vendors. Multiple stores are often owned by the same vendor, the different stores are just "exploiting various retail strategies".
Nothing is actively illegal. Everyone just independently realized they could make a shitton of money because travelers are forced to either pay their prices or starve.
In this case (and the root of some of the problem) is that it's not even "the government" that owns the airport. The airports are operated by the Port Authority of NY and NJ, which is an extra-governmental slush-fund-distributor that isn't meaningfully accountable to either state government, the NYC government, or any of the relevant NJ municipal governments. There is nothing meaningful that voters can do to affect change in the organization, so nothing is likely to change.
If you want simple data, lets look at the price of bottled water or soda at an airport (I usually bring an empty with me but not the point). It is priced the freakin same across every eatery. No collusion?
There’s no collusion if they’re all owned by the same vendor, which is common (and pointed out in TFA). The problem then isn’t collusion; it’s that the agencies responsible for ensuring fair airport pricing are captured by the businesses that they’re supposed to regulate.
Go to any airport an Asia and you will find plenty of drinking water fountains. Sure, sometimes the cold water is broken but at least it's sanitary drinking water.
Meanwhile Frankfurt tells you that the tap water in the restrooms is safe to drink. Absolutely absurd that Airports where you are effectively stuck for possibly hours and are paying for that priviledge can get away with not having to provide basic neccessities.
>A big problem is that it often isn't a free market. Joe The Sandwich Guy can't just randomly decide to open up a store inside the airport. There's a limited amount of space, a lease can easily last a decade, and any that come up are usually granted rather than auctioned.
It's basically like a professional license. The system is designed to make you waste so much of your life and money entering the market that undercutting people by any appreciable amount is the last thing you'll do once you're there.
There is no competition in a lot of airports. I believe that OTG manages all of the concessions at EWR. There are a lot of options, but there’s no price competition as they’re all run by the same company.
Let me take a moment to remind everyone that OTG is the monopolistic food distributor that puts ipads as sales points in _all_ seating at the gates in JFK - not just the restaurant seating. If you want to sit at your gate, you must be advertised to.
When I've turned the ipad around or covered the ipad's camera with a napkin, a worker has come by and forced me to face the ipad's camera back at me, even if I'm not buying anything. Dystopian.
This sort of thing is a big part of why flying is simply hell.
> When I've turned the ipad around or covered the ipad's camera with a napkin, a worker has come by and forced me to face the ipad's camera back at me, even if I'm not buying anything.
Time to start carrying a bit of electrical tape to put over the cameras.
There is not enough actual competition for this to happen.
Take a major hub like LAX which is already segregated by groups of airlines across subsets of terminals. How many options do you have to choose from post-security for something as simple as burgers or pizza? Let alone something like pasta or something like Indian or Chinese food.
“We have both Panda Express and McDonalds” is not a sign of competition.
