Durban - Time was when airlines used to compete with each other – and now it is the airport hubs themselves that are rivals.
“And that is something we have got to be alive to in the context of customer service,” Bongani Maseko, chief executive of the Airports Company South Africa (Acsa) said.
Addressing a media briefing during a break in the 23rd Airports Council International (ACI) Africa Regional Assembly, hosted by Acsa in uMhlanga, Maseko said while OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg, used to be the only airport hub in Africa, now, with the development of aviation, Kenya, because of its position, is becoming more convenient for some passengers to fly to.
Dubai was another hub and he predicted that Addis Ababa would also become one.
It was up to airports to build brand loyalty and provide a service that differentiated from others so that people wanted to fly to places like OR Tambo International Airport where the transit processes were seamless.
Airports were the first and last impressions of the regions they were located in, he said.
The theme of the two-day conference, which started on Monday, is service excellence.
ACI Africa has 59 members in Africa operating 251 airports and in 2012, they collectively handled 153 million passengers, 1 795 tons of air cargo and over 2.5m aircraft movements.
The conference is being held in Durban for the first time.
Angela Gittens, the director-general of ACI worldwide, said passengers can forgive almost anything at an airport as long as they feel safe and it was clean.
They also liked the ambience: the feel they get when they walked into a terminal. If there was a sense of order, there was a sense of security.
What they least liked were the security queues which they said took time, robbed them of a certain amount of dignity and made them uncomfortable.
As a result of this feedback, improvements had been made in the security process at airports around the world.
Ali Tounsi, the secretary- general of ACI Africa, said there were large discrepancies across the continent with some very high and low levels of services and standards, partly attributed to different cultures, languages and geographical dimensions. “A big challenge is also the issue of safety with the African continent having the worst safety ranking in the world,” he said.
With so much happening economically in Africa, in the next few years airports would play a hugely important role and had to have priority attention.
Maseko said Acsa was often accused of charging exorbitant parking rates, especially in Joburg, but these were benchmarked against the high street.
Airports did not deliberately abuse the situation because there was nowhere else to park at the airport, he said.
Daily News