At AirGate Solutions, we’ve just completed our July-August update of Airports Using Facebook.  We now are tracking over 160 airports, including the Top 30 International Airports, as defined by Airports Council International (ACI). In this post, we focused only on airports that use Facebook as a social media platform, as defined by an active Facebook page.

What is truly surprising is that is less than 50% of the 160+ 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. More surprising, is the fact that we also found most airport websites do not provide a link to their social media pages (Facebook or Twitter).

Measured by an airport’s total number of Facebook Fans, we see that only 40% of the airports in our Top 10 categories are large international airports (in CAPS), as categorized ACI, ranked by total numbers of passengers.

The Top 10 Airports Using Facebook (total Fans) – U.S. Airports Only
Cleveland
Akron-Canton
Oakland
Yeager
ATLANTA
BOSTON
DENVER
South Bend
McAllen-Miller
LOS ANGELES

The Top 10 Airports Using Facebook (total Fans) – All Airports
Cleveland
Akron-Canton
SINGAPORE
Oakland
Yeager
ATLANTA
BOSTON
Budapest
DENVER
South Bend

Thanks for your many comments regarding our Social Media Index tool for airports. It was designed more as a “census” of how many …

As mentioned in a previous blog, Regional Airports: Challenges, Opportunities, airports continue to struggle to provide a competitive environment for their airline, GA and passenger constituencies. New or increased revenue streams are currently a top priority for most airport executives and their boards. Two sources of revenues most likely to be discussed by them are the PFC and non-aeronautical (commercial) income.

The first is the passenger facility charge (PFC). There is a current debate between the airlines and airports on this as a source of revenue. The PFC is a fee paid by passengers who use the airport and is generally spent on projects that increase airport capacity, safety, and security. The PFC has a maximum, which is a set by federal authorities. Not all airports charge a PFC, and many have a lower-than-allowed charge in place. Many airports see this as an excellent strategy to encourage new airlines or route development.

The second, and the real challenge for airports, is how to focus their funding strategies to increase their non-aeronautical (commercial) income. In many cases, this means increasing their retail and services revenues for …

This Friday July 30th in Sydney, learn how airports can leverage their social media for brand building. We’re presenting a Masterclass, the aim of which is to give airport executives a hands-on crash course into airport branding, ultimately helping airports to drive revenue and loyalty through social media conversations.  And you’ll discover the power of social media to engage travelers like Robert.

Participants will walk away with a 6-week plan for executing a social media strategy at their airports.

Introduction: Web 2.0 and Aviation

What is Web 2.0 and why is it an important medium?
Before and after Web 2.0 – how brand conversations have evolved
The basic tenet – building a community on Web 2.0
To start from scratch, or to leverage on existing social networks?
To sell, or not to sell through Web 2.0?
Risks, and how to overcome them?
How to get started with Web 2.0?
How airlines and airports around the world are using social media?
Case Study: JetBlue Airways
Case Study: Melbourne Airport

Deep Dive

Hands-on Simulation exercise
Finding mentions about their airports on Social Media
Finding mentions about airlines that fly their airports
How to identify influencers their airports, on social media
Basic sentiment analysis

Group Exercise …

Introducing the Passenger Experience IndexSM

Airport ROI is a good metric for airports. But in order to extend the opportunity of engaging with passengers as customers, we must focus on them as part of the metric. In so doing, a new measurement paradigm is needed, one which we call a “Passenger Experience Index” (PEI). This Index considers new opportunities of customer engagement that Social Media and new technologies bring to the equation.

The Passenger Experience Index (PEI) must include many new complex objectives and metrics. The passenger focuses on their entire travel experience, whereas current ASQ surveys only deal with airport physical aspects in airports. This should not be confused with the PEI. If we are looking for new opportunities to increase value to passengers while increasing revenue for the airport, then the PEI is the our focus point.

When the PEI is put into an application framework, it becomes what we call “Destination Marketing”. This is a perfect storm of continuous contact, opt in services, geo-location + itinerary, flight data and …

We have had quite a few requests to update our Twitter and Facebook tables from airports. Yo simplify the process, we’ve created a tool that allows airports to update their own data. The SMI Index Tool is an entry level ranking tool that enables airports to gauge their relative usage of social media.

To Update Your Airport’s # Followers/#Fans:
The SMI Index Tool requires you to input your 3 letter IATA airport code, number of passengers and aircraft movements. If you have a Twitter account, just enter your @airportname and press get count, which retrieves the current # Followers. The process is the same for Facebook and # Fans. To enter the data, you’ll need to enter the Captcha words (spam protection) and then press “Get Your Ranking”. This will update the information on file and provide a relative social media index ranking for your airport.

To Enter Your Airport’s Data as a New Entry:
The SMI Index Tool requires you to input your 3 letter IATA airport code, airport name, the total number of passengers and aircraft movements. If you have …

In our previous blog on social media metrics, we briefly touched on organizational issues as it applies to airports. First was, what changes may need to be considered in terms of people, skills, methods of deployment and KPI measurement. We want to ensure that initiatives of value are properly aligned with desired outcomes – if mishandled, they could  lead to mismanagement of messaging and perhaps alienate passengers or violate some federal aviation / communications regulations in your particular jurisdiction.

We would suggest that social media be focused on passenger usage primarily. If such, we should ask then “Who should own Social Media in the airport organization?” When we reviewed our Top 10 Airports Using Twitter and Top 10 Airports Using Facebook, we found many major international airports did not have a social media presence. This may demonstrate the dilemma currently facing these airport and their internal organization.

Traditionally, we see the following breakdown of social media usage;
Marketing  54%
Department creep  18% ( other departments who are dabbling unspecified)
Public Relations  14%

Few organizations utilize a centralized group for social media responsibility for the reason that it is a cross …

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 benefits of being top-tier. A new class of traveler has evolved: the “fragmented frequent flyer” (FFF or #fragflyer).

Airlines continue to experience significant cost pressures as a result of increased fuel and insurance costs, transparent fares pricing and more low-fare competition. Some airlines are now restricting benefits, even to their top-tier frequent flyer groups. As an example, it is harder to redeem reward miles due to the decrease in airline capacity. And as the pressure builds for more cost reductions, the lower-tier frequent flyer groups will be the casualty. Essentially, the loser in the current …

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 international airports fall into our Top 10 category. In other words, we would have expected that the bigger the airport, the more followers – not necessarily true.

The Top 10 Airports Using Twitter (Total Followers)

London Heathrow (LHR)
Manchester (MAN)
Richmond (RIC)
Boston (BOS)
London City (LCY)
London Gatwick (LGW)
Akron-Canton (CAK)
Los Angeles (LAX)
Orlando (MCO)
Phoenix (PHX)

We felt there was another to look at the results – that in terms of customer engagement. For this, we used a ratio of followers to total passengers using the airport. We felt that this …