Brussels Airport Wins Europe's Top Industry Award

TALLINN, Estonia, May 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Brussels Airport was announced as the overall winner of the third heat of this year's Routes Airport Marketing Awards last night at a spectacular networking evening at the Song Festival Grounds in Tallinn.  Almost 900 aviation professionals, and the President of Estonia, were gathered to witness the presentation of the awards and to take part in the largest Routes Europe event to date.

The Routes Airport Marketing Awards have become synonymous with recognising and rewarding the highest standards of marketing activities undertaken by airports.  The awards work on the core principle that the people who are best placed to judge an airport's marketing activities are the airlines.  Airlines from the European region have spent the last few months voting for the airports they felt deserved to win and their votes were based on an airport's marketing activities over the past year.

The overall winner, Brussels Airport, demonstrated a clear route development strategy and implementation process in their awards submission and illustrated clearly how they have worked with their airline customers.  Winning this regional heat now enables them to be automatically shortlisted for the World Routes Awards due to be held in Abu Dhabi later this year.

David Stroud, Executive Vice President Airports, Routes, said:  "We are delighted that Brussels has won this regional heat of our awards and will now compete in the World Routes Airport Marketing Awards later this year."

Speaking just after receiving the award, Leon Verhallen, Director of Aviation Marketing, said:  "We were thrilled to be firstly nominated by our clients again - as that is the most important step - but it is wonderful to be selected as the overall winner for the European region.  We put together a very thorough submission that showed the important relationship between the airport and its airline partners and a special animation helped to support this.  Crucially, we did this with one of the most enthusiastic and best teams in the world."  

The Routes Airport Marketing Awards were split into 3 sub-regional categories; Northern Europe, Mediterranean & Southern Europe and Central & Eastern Europe, with a new category being introduced this year for airports of under 4million passengers.  Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen was crowned winner of the Mediterranean and Southern Europe category, Prague Airport triumphed in the Central & Eastern category and Bremen topped the under 4m pax category.   

A complete list of the nominated airports in each category can be found below:

Northern Europe
Brussels Airport - WINNER
Amsterdam Airport- HIGHLY COMMENDED
Hamburg Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED
Zurich Airport

Central & Eastern Europe
Prague Airport - WINNER
Warsaw Chopin Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED
Budapest Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED

Mediterranean & Southern Europe
Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport - WINNER
Antalya Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED
Athens International Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED
Malaga Airport

Under 4 million
City Bremen Airport - WINNER
Friedrichshafen Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED
Ajaccio Airport
Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport

Overall Winner - Brussels Airport

Notes to Editors

About Routes

• Routes organises world-renowned airline and airport networking events through its regional and global Route Development Forums. Each year, there is one global event and one regional event in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and CIS respectively. http://www.routesonline.com

• Routes was founded in 1995 as part of the Manchester UK‐based ASM Ltd., a consultancy specialising in the field of route development for airports. http://www.asm-global.com

• Routes and ASM were acquired by UBM Aviation Worldwide Ltd in August 2010.  Routes is a UBM Aviation brand. UBM Aviation specialises in the supply of data and information products, market intelligence, news and events related to the global aviation industry. More information can be found at http://www.ubmaviation.com

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