Auckland Airport wins prestigious airport marketingawards

Auckland Airport has beaten strong competition to be named the best airport in Asiafor international marketing, at the prestigious Routes Asia Airport Marketing Awards,held in Adelaide, Australia last night. Auckland won the Oceania category, and went on to win the overall Asia regionalaward ahead of the other category winners from South-East Asia (SingaporeChangi), India (Hyderabad), Middle East (King Fahd International) and China/North-East Asia (Seoul Incheon).

The awards mean that Auckland Airport has beenautomatically shortlisted for the World Routes Awards which will be held in Vancouver in September.

The awards, voted on by airlines, recognise airports whose marketing efforts havemade a real impact on future airline network development plans.Auckland Airport general manager aeronautical business development, Glenn Wedlock, said “We’re pleased that the efforts of the collective New Zealand industryin seeking to develop more effective air services programmes and sustainablemarkets for growth has been recognised by the airlines.

As New Zealand’s primarytourism and travel hub, airlines are essential partners in our business, and we share with them and with other key industry partners a mutual goal in growing NewZealand’s major export industry, tourism.”

”Auckland Airport made a conscious decision 18 months ago to invest in building upa stronger capability for air services development, and in the past 12 months wehave launched three new services on the Tasman, and two new main truck routes in the domestic market, adding around 413,000 seats annually”, said Mr Wedlock, “Ourbusiness development team has made significant progress establishing AucklandAirport as a preferred destination, aligning our initiatives with the needs of airlines,and ensuring that we create value for them”.

Mr Wedlock said, “Air services are of critical importance to the New Zealandeconomy, especially in the areas of trade and tourism. Auckland Airport is workinghard with airlines and industry partners to deliver value to New Zealand tourismthrough our understanding of air service development and our strong relationships with the airlines that fly, or potentially will fly, to New Zealand.

By proactively working with airlines on their marketing, we can help raise the “mindshare” for New Zealandand grow tourism traffic.”Mr Wedlock added, “At Auckland Airport, we are proud of our record of engagementwith airlines, and the successes we are achieving for them and for our widercommunity of stakeholders. This collective market development work will be vitally important for the industry as the key markets that are vital to New Zealand’s tourismsector continue to emerge from the global downturn”