Airport Marketing Strategies

This chapter introduces the evolution of airports from the Airlines Deregulation Act of 1978 in the United States to the present day. Starting with a description of airports and their surroundings, the tourists' perceptions concerning airports, and how airports and airlines have become the cornerstones of the tourism and aviation industries, especially in the period of pandemic for later retrieval. During the 1980s and 1990s, airport operators worked under an established monopoly, and they did not consider marketing strategies to increase and maximise business revenue. Since then, airport operators have been constantly looking for new business models to increase aeronautical and commercial revenues. This chapter ends with a description of how digitalisation represents not only a world full of opportunities in the airport and marketing relationship but also a great challenge to operators and marketers in terms investment and innovation.

This chapter describes the importance of marketing activities at airports. The link between marketing and airports has been reinforced by new technologies and digital marketing tools. This technological combination has had a high penetration in the user's smartphones and airport activities, particularly in non-aeronautical revenue. Moreover, this chapter introduces a new conceptualisation of airport marketing, a definition more updated and aligned with airports' business needs in the time of a pandemic crisis. The rest of the chapter shows the mobile marketing tool and its interaction with passengers, as well as how this helps airport operators design new products and services, and increase commercial revenue through digital channels.

The airport operators' management is a complex process, especially in terms of airport cost and revenue factors, because it requires a basic understanding of economics, marketing, logistics, the current legal framework of the airport according to national and international bodies and the evaluation of the airport's operational processes and infrastructure every day. In addition, this chapter presents how these factors affect airport pricing, which has increased significantly after the COVID-19 pandemic in response to new measures of security and hygiene, higher fuel prices and the introduction of new government measures to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus in countries, airports and airlines. To sum up, this section is intended to provide readers with an overview of the management of airport costs and revenue distribution by operators and alert them to key issues and their effects on airport economics, strategies marketing and long-term survivability.

This chapter discusses the importance of airport business portfolios in the digitalisation of aeronautical and non-aeronautical activities, particularly in this economy uncertainly period. Airports are in a transitional period of digitalisation, decarbonation and new business activities, with the aim of redefining their business models. A successful airport marketing strategy must take tangible and intangible items into account. For this reason, airport operators are developing modern business models to diversify income sources and optimise the available resources of the airport's infrastructure. The implementation of these new business models is influenced by competition levels between airports, destination attractiveness, airport reputation, a proactive value proposition, catchment area and the quality of service offered by airport operators.

This chapter focuses on strategy, marketing strategy and airport marketing strategy concepts from an aviation and marketing point of view. Furthermore, in this chapter, we introduced a new and innovative airport marketing strategy concept and how this can influence tourism, financials, business, consumers' behaviour, sustainability and aviation activities. This chapter also analyses how operators implement new airport strategies to improve their operability, sustainability, governance and customer satisfaction. When selling an innovative product or service, the airport operator needs to examine the underlying factors that drive passengers' purchasing decisions. Airport marketing strategies are changing in the aviation and tourism sectors due to the pandemic crisis and Ukraine's war, and operators subsequently need to consider these new factors when they develop new marketing plans and goals.

The study and analysis of airport marketing strategies and the diversification of its activities through strategic alliances are essential for airports, and these should be a priority to plan and develop marketing plans in these times of uncertain economic and pandemic, because the future of the aviation and tourism industries lies in stressing the value of unity between the two sectors. This chapter shows real examples of airport marketing strategies around the world to help airport and airline operators, marketers and destination marketing organisations (DMOs) improve their marketing strategies in a competitive and environmentally sustainable market, as is the case with aviation and tourism activities. Opportunities to develop mutually beneficial relationships in cities between DMOs and airports are plentiful but often largely untapped by both parties due to miscommunication and the common interests of business operators. The marketing strategy of diversification is critical to reviving in times of economic downturn.

The use of digital channels to promote products and services is experimenting with an unprecedented boom in promotion and communication marketing campaigns; airports such as Los Angeles (IATA: LAX) in the United States, Orlando International (IATA: MCO) in the United States, Schiphol Amsterdam (IATA: AMS) in the Netherlands or Changi airport (IATA: SIN) in Singapore are pioneers and recognised experts in marketing communication and technical aspects of promotion campaigns. The brand image of airports is a great opportunity to universalise loyalty marketing and price promotion for airport business portfolios. For this reason, in this chapter, we speak about neuromarketing science, which is a marketing discipline that uses medical techniques to understand how our central nervous system reacts to marketing stimuli. This is helping companies and airports get more consumer insights through digital channels.

The airport's international recognition and attractive potential by awards' private and public organisations or governments have awakened a great level of interest from airport and airline operators, researchers and academics in the aviation industry. Some of the most important prestigious aviation and tourism accolades worldwide, like the World Airport Awards (Skytrax), Airports Council International (ACI) World's annual Airports Service Quality ‘ASQ Awards’ (Airport Council International) and the World Travel Awards (World Travel & Tourism Council), recognise and reward the excellence of services and products provided by airports and airlines. Consequently, the winning airports have global recognition depending on the award's category and empower the airport's brand image against its main competitors. These awards have become true marketing windows, where all airports want to win to promote their brand image and distinguish the airport's position as a world leader in the aviation industry. This topic and the dissemination of information at the airport's website and other digital channels will be tackled in Chapter 8.

This chapter tackles cybersecurity as a sociotechnical phenomenon in airport marketing activities. The cybersecurity issues at organisations marketing campaigns (e.g. phishing attacks, URL poisoning, man-in-the-middle attacks or distributed denial-of-service attacks) through digital channels are increasingly frequent and dangerous to companies and customers because of the digitisation of business (websites and apps) that has become the companies' main showcase. Airport and airline operators need to develop new avenues of prevention and mitigation approaches related to cyberattacks in the marketing area. A greater understanding of cybersecurity processes will enable airport operators and airlines to develop security level prevention and mitigation strategies in order to address the increasing challenges airports and airlines face within promotion and communication campaigns, which were previously implemented in their marketing plans.