Travellers have spoken: the world’s best airports for customer experience revealed

Airports Council International (ACI) World has today revealed the recipients of this year’s Airport Service Quality (ASQ) Awards which celebrate and showcase the world’s best airports as voiced by travellers.

The COVID-19 pandemic continued to have a major impact on passenger traffic in 2021 with evolving health measures and a new set of expectations affecting how the airport experience is delivered and experienced. Despite the ongoing crisis, airports around the globe have continued to prioritize listening and adapting to the evolving needs of their customers through ASQ surveys.

From the data collected in 2021 from over 370,000 surveys, 110 awards have been won by 87 individual airports around the world. The award categories include Best Airports by Size (passengers per year) and Region, as well as Best Hygiene Measures by Region, of which there are 46 winners.

The new health and hygiene related questions added to the survey questionnaire in 2020 allow airports to better understand the customer response to new health measures related to COVID-19 and the corresponding award category recognizes airports that have successfully responded to them in the eyes of travellers.

The new hygiene category also complements ACI’s Airport Health Accreditation program, which helps airports align their health measures with global standards and currently includes more than 300 airports.

View the list of winning airports

“After a second year of the pandemic, this year’s Airport Service Quality (ASQ) Award winners are especially reflective of customer experience leadership during the most challenging time in our sector’s history,” ACI World Director General Luis Felipe de Oliveira said. “We are exceedingly proud of their stellar leadership in delivering the very best customer experience.

“The basis of the ASQ surveys and the entire suite of solutions is continual learning and improvement to reach sustainable customer experience excellence. As the industry recovers, continuing to listen and adapt to travellers will be absolutely crucial to strengthening airports’ competitive advantage, non-aeronautical revenue, and ensuring the sustained recovery of the entire aviation ecosystem.”

For the second year, ACI World continues its long-term partnership with global travel technology company Amadeus to deliver the ASQ Awards. ACI and Amadeus will be celebrating the 2021 ASQ winners at an awards ceremony at the ASQ Forum & ACI Customer Experience Global Summit in September.

Elena Avila, EVP Airport IT & Airline Operations, Amadeus said: “There has never been a more important time for our industry to place the needs of passengers at the heart of everything we do. The ASQ Awards recognize airports that continue to make this crucial commitment despite the challenges our industry faces. We at Amadeus believe the passenger experience can be further transformed in the coming years through even closer airline and airport collaboration, underpinned by modern technologies like data analytics, common cloud infrastructure and biometrics.”

The Airport Service Quality program is the world’s leading airport customer experience measurement and benchmarking program. The ASQ Departures program measures passenger satisfaction across 34 key performance indicators. More than half of the world’s travellers pass through an ASQ airport.

ACI has continued to adapt the comprehensive quality control process to the ASQ Awards during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure the highest quality when determining benchmarking and findings.