Voting for the third regional heat of the 2013 Routes Airport Marketing Awards is now open and airlines from within the European region are being asked to consider the efficient use of marketing activities by an airport over the last 12 months when deciding who to nominate.

Winners of the awards, which recognise the marketing performance of airports within Europe, will be announced during the Routes Europe Networking Evening which will be held on Monday 13thMay at the event in Budapest.

The annual Routes awards are highly regarded as the most valuable awards in the industry as they are voted for and judged by the airline network planning community. They provide the airline community with the chance to have their say as to which airport they think provides the best overall marketing services to them whether it be about their particular relationship, effective results, provision of data and information or innovative techniques to establish new or maintain and develop existing routes.

These much sought after awards are a great way for the winning airports to have a credible recognition which they can proudly talk about to their customers and other stakeholders. Brussels Airport was announced as the winner of last year’s European heat and speaking at the time Brussels’ Director of Aviation Marketing, Leon Verhallen said: “We were thrilled to be, firstly, nominated by our clients again - as that is the most important step - but it is wonderful to be selected as the overall winner for the European region. We put together a very thorough submission that showed the important relationship between the airport and its airline partners and a special animation helped to support this. Crucially, we did this with one of the most enthusiastic and best teams in the world.”

The Routes Europe Awards 2013 will see a number of new innovations for the event in Budapest which will be continued throughout the year at all other Routes events, culminating at World Routes in Las Vegas this October.

These innovations include a blended approach to the shortlisted airports where the final shortlist will include a number of airports who will be shortlisted using our online voting form together with a number of airports who have been shortlisted by a panel of industry experts drawn from the airline network planning community. This year will also see, for the first time at Routes Europe, the addition of a Destination Award for the best destination marketing campaign by a tourism authority.

Simply click here and log in to your Routesonline profile to nominate (in priority order) up to five airports in your network within the region, irrespective of their size. Voting will remain open until Tuesday 16th April 2013 and shortlisted airports will be announced shortly after this deadline.