St Petersburg’s Pulkovo International Airport was announced as the winner of the fourth heat of this year’s Routes Airport Marketing Awards last night at a spectacular networking evening at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Ekaterinburg. Almost 200 aviation professionals were gathered to witness the presentation of the awards that took part alongside the second Routes CIS forum hosted by Ekaterinburg Koltsovo Airport.

The Routes Airport Marketing Awards have become synonymous with recognising and rewarding the highest standards of marketing activities undertaken by airports. The awards work on the core principle that the people who are best placed to judge an airport’s marketing activities are the airlines. Airlines from the European region have spent the last few months voting for the airports they felt deserved to win and their votes were based on an airport’s marketing activities over the past year.

The winner, Pulkovo International Airport, demonstrated a clear route development strategy and implementation process in their awards submission and illustrated how they have worked clearly with their airline customers. Winning this regional heat now enables them to be automatically shortlisted for the World Routes Awards due to be held in Abu Dhabi later this year.

Speaking at last night’s ceremony, Nigel Mayes, Vice President Commercial, UBM Aviation Routes highlighted some of the reasons behind the selection. “This airport demonstrated strong results, its passenger traffic has increased 13.8 per cent in 2011. It has attracted seven new carriers including a signature route launched by Emirates Airline in November 2011. The airport is also proactive in undertaking route studies, analysing MIDT and TCH data. It introduced a Route Development Regulation (RDR) programme for carriers and it works closely with stakeholders such as tourism authorities and chamber of commerce in target destinations,” he said.

Speaking exclusively to The HUB after receiving the award, Evgeniy Ilyin, Commercial Director, Northern Capital Gateway, the operators of Pulkovo International Airport, said: “I am absolutely delighted to come up to collect this prestigious award at what is a celebratory time at the airport. In the last couple of days we celebrated the 80th anniversary of Pulkovo International and being presented with the Routes Airport Marketing Award for the CIS region shows just how far we have come in that period. The arrival of seven new operators in the past calendar year shows we are doing something right and to secure the direct link to Dubai International with Emirates Airline was a major endorsement on our business arrangements.

“We now need to develop and grow from here and use this as a platform for further development. We are now working on a further expansion within our facilities which in the initial phase will boost passenger capacity to around 15 million. This will be completed by the end of next year and we are focussing our efforts on our first target of attracting new direct links to the Americas (particularly New York) and then secure additional capacity to South Asia to complete our jigsaw."

Alongside the winner, Krasnoyarsk Yemelyanovo Airport was selected as a Highly Commended entry. The airport has achieved 28 per cent growth in passenger traffic in 2011 over 2010, with traffic reaching 1.6 million passengers. Freight tonnage also increased 34 per cent over the same period, while the airport’s network was extended by 13 destinations with the number of operating carriers increasing to 28. Other airports shortlisted in the process comprised Domodedovo International Airport, Novosibirsk International Airport, Vnukovo International Airport and Sheremetyevo International Airport.

Ahead of the ceremony Ekaterinburg Koltsovo Airport, which as host was unable to enter the awards, was presented with a certificate of special achievement for their contribution to the development of the aviation market in the CIS. “The airport has lead the way in developing infrastructure in the regional markets, demonstrated best practice in airport marketing and shown how the development of aviation can be catalyst for economic growth to its city and region,” said Nigel Mayes.