WORLD ROUTES: Brussels Airport Secures World Routes Airport Marketing Award

Richard Maslen October 01, 2012

Brussels Airport triumphed as overall winner of the World Routes Awards 2012 which were formally announced last night at the Abu Dhabi Networking Evening which took place at the Yas Marina Circuit, home of the F1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix racing circuit.

The awards, which are voted exclusively by airlines, included five regional categories: Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and CIS. This year, for the first time, the awards included a special award for Airports Under Four Million Passengers and presentations of a Tourism Award for best destination marketing campaign by a tourism authority and the ORBIS Award for Social Responsibility also took place.

Brussels were also named as the winner from the European region, with Dallas Fort/Worth International Airport honoured from the Americas region. From the Africa region Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi were ranked top with Ekaterinburg Koltsovo International Airport winning the CIS category whilst the Asia Region saw top honours going to Singapore Changi.

"This is a wonderful recognition of the achievement of our aviation marketing team over the past year. To be recognised for our hard efforts by this industry's peers is even more rewarding," said Arnaud Feist, Chief Executive Officer, Brussels Airport.

Having won the European heat of the Airport Marketing Awards and now the Europe and overall award, Leon Verhallen, Head of Aviation Marketing, Brussels Airport was in positive spirits after the awards ceremony. "We have reached the top following our win tonight," he said. " I don't think we can go any higher then achieving this reward."

Darwin International Airport were awarded as the winner of the newest award category for Airports Under Four Million Passengers and Seychelles Tourism Board were awarded best destionation marketing campaign by a Tourism Authority.

The World Routes Awards have grown and developed over the last 15 years and are unique within the industry because they are voted for exclusively by the airline network planning community. The prestige of these industry awards, which recognise excellence in air service development by airports, is largely due to this method of voting.

David Stroud, Executive Vice President of Routes, said: “We would like congratulate this year’s winners and highly commended airports, year on year we are impressed by the calibre of the submissions that are supplied to us. Proving the importance of airline-airport relationship. We would also like to thank our judges who are all senior members of the airline network planning community and of course to our sponsor OAG for their continued support.”

In addition to the shortlisted finalists nominated by the airlines, the regional winners from each of the regional Routes events from 2012 automatically gained a place in the final judging.

A respected panel of industry executives then reviewed the lists and submissions from the nominated airports in order to determine the winners. The panel consisted of the following experts:

Mr John Kirby, Senior Director, International for Southwest Airlines
Mr Rick Wagstaffe, Vice President Procurement & Logistics for Emirates
Mr Alan McIntyre, Head of Network and Schedule Development for easyJet
Mr Imed Ben Abdallah, Head of Network Planning for Etihad Airways
Ms Sabine Reim, Network Development Manager for British Airways
Mr Germal Singh Khera, Senior Vice President International Affairs for Malaysia Airlines
Mr Mauricio Emboaba Moreira, Senior Strategic Advisor for Gol Transportes Aereos
Mr John Grant, Executive Vice President of OAG

“This is the first year I have participated in the judging process for the World Routes Awards. I was impressed by the quality of the submissions and enjoyed the seeing the diversity of the approach from airports across the world,” said Rick Wagstaffe, Vice President Procurement & Logistics, Emirates Airline.

Additionally Air France-KLM was named as the winner of the ORBIS Award for Social Responsibility.

The full list of companies shortlisted under each award category were as follows:

Africa (All Airports)