I’ve spent early last week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, speaking at and Chairing the Pillars of Aviation conference, featuring industry stalwarts from around the world, including airline and airport heads. The conference instilled a lot of positivity in me, about the future of the sector, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

Airports demonstrating leadership

For starters, no speakers backed out, and the conference hall was full. This may not sound significant, but it’s one of the early indicators of things getting back to normal. Among all the speeches, I was impressed by the efforts airports like Melbourne and GoldCoast are making to work in-tandem with airlines to ensure a healthy, business-driving relationship.

In fact, Malaysia Airports is doing a tremendous job creating the hub of the future, with an LCC terminal interconnected with the existing Kuala Lumpur International Airport. That means when the new LCC Terminal is ready in 2011, passengers would be able to seamlessly connect from a Cebu Pacific flight from Manila, to an AirAsia X flight to Delhi, or a Malaysia Airlines flight to London. And at a combined capacity of 53 million per year, it would be the largest airport-hub in the region.

Now you see why I’m excited about the future?

Below, I have highlighted key points from a number of airport speaker’s presentations, to give you a sneak peek into what was discussed at the conference. For excerpts of presentations from airlines, head over to SimpliFlying.com

Airlines vs Airports debate

• Convergence of LCCs and legacies causes a problem for airports
• Airports have been built with the network carrier in mind
• The sudden explosive growth from LCCs result in airports trying to morph. By then LCCs change again – that’s the dilemma

Question by Damien of Melbourne Airport to airline CEOs: Airports have started to look the same. All like shopping malls. What would the next generation of airports look like?

• Turkish Airlines’ Temel Kotil: It’s ok if they charge, But services should be top class, even for transit passengers
• Peter Hill (Oman Air)
  • Muscat: Small/Compact. +ve: Get out in 5 mins. -ve: difficult to transit. Hence, airports should closely consult with airlines while increasing the size and scope of the airport – airlines are their customers
  • The airport hassle and experience is the single biggest negative impact on air travel, especially short haul, and when alternates are available
• Malaysia Airlines’ Tengku Azmil
  • Airport of the future should have a seamless experience
    • Fingerprint eGates
    • Download movies/iPads etc

Rimzie Ismail – Dubai Airports

• Airport Marketing – you’re only marketing the destination. The airport is a gateway, not a utility
• Service delivery at an airport
  • Customers are 3rd party stakeholders who interact with the pax, like shops, security staff
  • Passengers themselves are secondary customers – info desks, airport facilities
  • Services provided directly to airlines > Traffic rights, slots, ATC services
  • Service Champions – leading the brand delivery. Key ambassadors of the airport causing ripple efforts. 1.5mths salary as bonus + lunch with Sheikh Ahmad!
• Non-Aeronautical Revenue
  • Dubai duty free sales risen 20% last year!: Between 1995 to 2009, Dubai Airports traffic rose from 7.5Mn to 40Mn
  • Pax service charges
  • Rental
  • Ads
  • Hotel
  • Al Majlis – the lounge – VIP service where people can buy in: end to end VIP service. dedicated escort, private limo to the aircraft > $500 for up to 10 people. Top spenders are Saudi, Russian and Omani!
  • Executive flight services
  • Marhaba service – only escort service. $30 per psx
  • Dubai International hotel – 135% occupancy, because can be multiple times a day. Gym is also rentable per us $10
  • First Class lounge for rent – $25/hr! For economy pax, who want to experience First Class
  • Food – from 5 star dining (the only one in the world) to Irish Village – ethic food/beer
  • Non Aeronautical revenue growth is 5X of aeronautical revenue!

Hope you now see why I have a positive feeling about the industry. What are your thoughts? Let’s discuss in comments, and over on Twitter (@simpliflyingAP)

Now that we’ve posted our Top Twitter Airports and Top Facebook Airports, it’s appropriate to state the caveat. As one comment suggested, “we need to be careful with this type of analysis”. We agree completely. The lists were compiled with the purpose to determine which airports were using social media as part of their marketing programs. Now the hard part begins.

Airport social media marketing, to have the proper business impact, is a process of well defined strategy, tactics and execution. It must be applied appropriately and in the proper mix, using several key principles:

• Core strategy development
• Corporate blogging
• Social media PR
• Communities for feedback and research
• Twitter and Facebook channels
• Video as a strategic SM platform
• Brand monitoring
• Metrics measurement and data insights
• Viral campaigns
• SM 2.0 architectures

Many airports ‘deploy’ elements of social media marketing, such as, blogs, Twitter, Facebook. They do so because they feel that they are applying newest marketing techniques. But many do not fully understand the implications required to turn it into a measurable and meaningful result.

Social media is no longer an optional element in your airport’s marketing plan. It’s integral to effectively managing your brand, your airport and your reputation. As Chris Anderson, author or ‘The Long Tail’, said, “It’s not what you say your brand is, it’s what Google says it is.” We would further emphasize that your Brand and Services are owned by the community of passengers you serve above all else.

What is important in deploying a social media strategy is to understand how effective the program is and to what extent it is having on achieving the objectives of the airport’s marketing program. There are 8 core social media application areas identified to consider and you need to be sure you develop your marketing plans in line with your chosen strategy and have clear objectives in mind. And those are objectives that are measurable.

Social media is a critical tool for interacting with your customers, the traveling public, and for listening to customer issues. Listening is fine as one objective, but are there others in your marketing strategy?

Reaching and engaging with passengers in real time!

Gaining Attention – Reaching Passengers Actively:

The use of metrics in social media can be misleading, as was the use of Internet Marketing metrics before them. A case in point would be the total number of page views – which may sound exciting, but we learned that if the bounce rates were high and leads were not captured and acted upon with a planned process – the page views to conversions or sales were a total disconnect.

Over the years, travelers have generally been well served by airline frequent flyer programs (FFP). However, with the pressure on to reduce airfare costs, many business travelers now choose, or are required by their companies, to fly with low-fare airlines.

Today’s passengers fly as much as they used to, but now have very fragmented travel patterns. These passengers still are frequent travelers, who manage to accumulate a significant number of miles in Y class seats in scheduled airlines or in low-fare airlines. Unfortunately, they never achieve an airline’s top-tier FFP status nor the …

Before applying Social Media Marketing metrics and analytics to the  streams of social messaging types coming in and going out of airports, it is important to decide on the Top Level Strategic Objectives these metrics will support. In terms of ROI, Social Media can be mapped to business and marketing values as in classical methods – that is, measuring awareness, reach and frequency of messaging. Although these metrics are usually quantifiable, Social Media brings an exciting and new exponential upside to the mix.

We attempt to lay out in a series of short Blogs, the steps required to develop a meaningful, …

At SimpliFlying Airports/AirGate Solutions, we’ve just completed our most recent update of Airports Using Facebook.  We now are tracking 130 airports, including the Top 30 International Airports, as defined by Airports Council International (ACI). In this update, we focused on airports that use Facebook as a social media platform, as defined by an active Facebook page.

What is truly surprising is that is over 50% of the 130 airports, many of them top international airports, either do not use Facebook as a social media platform or we were unable to locate their site. Equally surprising, is the fact that we also …

At AirGate Solutions, we’ve just completed our latest update of Airports Using Twitter. In this, we’re tracking airports that use Twitter as a social media platform.

The current list has 115 airports, which includes the Top 30 international airports, as listed by ACI.What we found surprising is that of the 115 airports, many of them top international airports, 25 airports either do not use Twitter as a social media platform or we were unable to locate them.

In terms of an airport’s total number of Followers, we see that some large …

Image by joiseyshowaa via Flickr

I speak at many airport industry conferences which provide an opportunity to re-state the customer’s viewpoint. The message is clear – for airports to adapt to the new economic realities, things must change. If they continue to do more of the same, why do they expect any different results?

A perceptive article in Airport Business written by Agnes Huff on “Delivering What Customers Demand Now” nicely re-states …