Saturday 20 / April / 2024
Salalah: Salalah Airport has won two international awards from Airports Council International (ACI) in appreciation of the experience it provided to passengers in 2021.
Salalah Airport was named best airport in the Middle East for quality of services in the category of airports with less than two million annual passengers.
The second award was for being the best airport in the Middle East for following health procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The winners of various awards from the ACI were announced during a ceremony Thursday, when the winners from around the world were named publicly.
High levels of professionalism
Praising the staff at Salalah Airport, Salim bin Awad Al Yafei, the executive vice president of the airport, said, “working in an environment similar to the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic gave us indications into the abilities of our airport teams, the authorities working in the facility and our strategic partners, when it came to their high levels of professionalism to deal with exceptional circumstances that may sometimes stand in the way of our work environment and necessary responses.
“I would like to praise the efforts of the Salalah Airport family, across all areas of operation, for providing distinguished services to all airport visitors and travellers, and for providing superior customer experiences despite the circumstances in which we found ourselves,” he added. “These circumstances constitute an important turning point in our efforts to enhance services.”
Airports Council International (ACI)
Airports Council International (ACI) represents the collective interests of airports around the world to promote excellence in the aviation industry. The organisation works with governments, regional ACI members, experts and international organisations like the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to develop policies, programmes and best practices that advance airport standards globally.
ACI World contributes to the safety, security and sustainability of the global aviation industry by advancing the collective interests of airports and the communities they serve and promoting excellence in airport management and operations. 1,950 airports and 717 members are part of ACI across 185 countries.
Airport Service Quality programme
“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 travelers will be absolutely crucial to strengthening airports’ competitive advantage, non-aeronautical revenue and ensuring the sustained recovery of the entire aviation ecosystem.”
The Airport Service Quality programme is the world’s leading airport customer experience measurement and benchmarking programme. The ASQ Departures programme 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.
