Meet The Team: Hermes Airports
Interview to Maria Kouroupi, Director of Aviation Development, Marketing and Communications at Hermes Airports.
What recent achievements are you most proud of?
We take great pride in our airports’ continuous growth and commitment to providing a positive experience for passengers and airline partners. Hermes Airports, the operator of Larnaka and Pafos airports, focuses on collaboration and customer-centric services, which have led to our greatest performance ever for 2023 and a record-breaking passenger traffic of over 11.6 million, averaging 32,000 passengers per day.
In total, 52 airlines served the two airports, offering flights to 39 countries across 159 routes. We are very proud that we have managed to recover traffic, opened new markets with 19 new routes in the last two years, have grown the winter contribution by increasing the year-round operations, and have laid the foundations for further growth through long term agreements with airlines.
What are the main goals your team is looking to achieve in the remainder of the year?
The main goal is to safeguard the connectivity and traffic levels despite the geopolitical and other airline related challenges. At the same time, we aim to close gaps in European capitals - currently, there are four which are not served: Madrid, Ljubljana, Luxembourg, and Lisbon. Also, we would like to secure steady growth, particularly from the new markets that flights have introduced in recent years whilst at the same time we focus on penetrating existing markets, and increasing weekly frequencies.
Besides this, a significant goal is to increase and maintain year-round connectivity to as many destinations as possible. To this end, during 2024, the winter contribution is expected to further increase to 26%, supporting our objective for year-round operations. This is partly achieved through the winter support we give to airlines as well as the various promotions we do with tourism stakeholders on winter tourism in Cyprus.
A medium-term objective is to achieve connectivity with distant destinations, either North America or Asia. This is a feasible goal provided that there is a collective effort with both the state and other stakeholders, both in Cyprus and abroad.
What challenges do you see in the future of route planning and how do you plan to address them?
The future of route planning presents several challenges including evolving traveller preferences, volatile environments including geopolitical challenges, rising costs, and sustainability issues. We plan to address these by fostering partnerships with airlines and other stakeholders that will allow us to remain adaptive and innovative, and to navigate the complexities of our industry.
Our team is agile, flexible, and innovative and our ambition is to remain at the forefront of airport management and air service development trends.
If you weren’t working with the aviation industry, what would you be doing?
I would work in the hospitality industry. I would probably run a small boutique hotel in a small community offering some unique local experiences and flavors.