DFW Awarded Top Industry Accolade

21st February 2012 - Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport was announced as the winner of the first heat of this year’s Routes Airport Marketing Awards last night at a lavish networking evening at the Sheraton Nassau. Almost 400 aviation professionals were gathered to witness the presentation of the awards and to take part in the 5th Routes Americas – the largest route development event for the entire Americas.

The Routes Airport Marketing Awards have become synonymous with recognising and rewarding the highest standards of marketing activities undertaken by airports. The awards work on the core principle that the people who are best placed to judge an airport’s marketing activities are the airlines.

Airlines from the Americas region spent the early part of the year voting for the airports they felt deserved to win and their votes were based on an airport’s marketing activities over the past year.

The winner, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport ,has had a successful 12 months with 30 new routes including six new carriers, but more importantly demonstrated their relationship with airlines and a creative and innovative approach to air service development. This now enables them to be automatically shortlisted for the World Routes Awards due to be held in Abu Dhabi later this year.

Highly commended in the Routes Americas awards were Boston Logan International Airport and Aruba Queen Beatrix International Airport. Boston has had a remarkable year in terms of growth, meanwhile Aruba demonstrated a creative approach to air service development securing a number of new services from Copa, AirTran, JetBlue and KLM over the last 12 months.

Nigel Mayes, Vice President & Commercial, from UBM Aviation Routes Limited, organiser of Routes Americas commented: “Dallas/Fort Worth provided a very concise and slick submission and were able to demonstrate their impressive results, together with detailing examples of their marketing communications efforts directed to airlines. Both Boston and Aruba demonstrated high year-on-year growth and provided excellent submissions, we continue to be impressed by the standard of submissions.”

DFW’s Vice President of Air Service Development, Luis Perez said: “We are delighted to be recognised as one of the airport’s that works hard to obtain the services of airline customers and we look forward to continuing this success and building on our existing relationships to bring more air services to Dallas/Fort Worth International. The arrival of new operators like Emirates Airline and Qantas will help us position ourselves as a worldwide gateway.”

This is Dallas/Fort Worth International’s second success in the Routes Airport Marketing Awards in the space of two years and Luis Perez says this highlights that the airport’s customer service approach and relationships with airline partners are working. “This is an endorsement on our focus on customer service. Our core business as an airport is to secure air services and that is something that we clearly do best, according to our airline partners.”

Other Airports shortlisted for a Routes Airport Marketing Award this year were Curacao-Hato International Airport, Fort Myers, Southwest Florida International Airport, Myrtle Beach Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport.