Developing Our Offer
MAG's approach to serving our customers has already won us recognition, with Manchester Airport holding all major travel industry awards for two consecutive years. This includes Manchester Airport being awarded Best UK Airport for the second year running. We intend to build on the improved levels of customer satisfaction reflected in these awards and deliver consistently excellent service across all our sites.
Regular passenger surveys by the Civil Aviation Authority help us to understand our customers' needs and respond to any shifts in our customer base. Key data from the latest surveys are shown below (Manchester: 2009; East Midlands: 2006; Bournemouth: 2008-2009; Humberside: 2007).
Purpose of Journey
%
| Manchester | East Midlands | Bournemouth | Humberside | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business | 17% | 12% | 4% | 24% |
| Leisure | 83% | 88% | 96% | 76% |
Socio-economic Group
%
| Manchester | East Midlands | Bournemouth | Humberside | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 7% | 7% | 3% | 3% |
| B | 23% | 19% | 27% | 11% |
| C1 | 35% | 28% | 31% | 37% |
| C2 | 22% | 19% | 12% | 23% |
| D | 10% | 9% | 4% | 14% |
| E | 3% | 1% | 7% | 1% |
| Unanswered | 0% | 17% | 16% | 10% |
- A: Upper Middle Class
- B: Middle Class
- C1: Lower Middle Class
- C2: Skilled Working Class
- D: Working Class
- E: Those at Lowest Level of Subsistence
Age
%
| Manchester | East Midlands | Bournemouth | Humberside | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2-10 | 1% | 4% | 2% | 0% |
| 11-15 | 1% | 2% | 1% | 0% |
| 16-19 | 4% | 4% | 3% | 2% |
| 20-24 | 8% | 7% | 6% | 6% |
| 25-34 | 16% | 13% | 12% | 13% |
| 35-44 | 21% | 20% | 14% | 25% |
| 45-54 | 23% | 17% | 19% | 21% |
| 55-59 | 9% | 10% | 10% | 11% |
| 60-64 | 8% | 9% | 10% | 9% |
| 65-74 | 7% | 10% | 11% | 10% |
| Over 74 | 2% | 2% | 4% | 3% |
| Unanswered | 0% | 0% | 7% | 0% |
Country of Residence
%
| Manchester | East Midlands | Bournemouth | Humberside | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK | 83% | 91% | 88% | 96% |
| Overseas | 17% | 9% | 12% | 4% |
As part of our ambition to become a high-performance and totally customer-centric organisation, we want to innovate, broaden and customise our offer to meet diverse needs identified at each of our airports. Our next focus is to look beyond the traditional retail and catering offer in our terminals and develop a number of airport products that will appeal to a wider variety of passengers, making the airport of the future much more central to customers in the holiday/travel experience.
In support of this, we are fully focused on developing our workforce to deliver defined service levels in a consistent way, and benchmarking ourselves continuously against the competition. For example, our Thanks for Being You initiative has focused on how every employee makes an important contribution to the customer experience. All colleagues took part in workshops to create service standards for their own departments, which have been communicated across the airport; since then, our Airport Service Quality survey scores for friendliness and courtesy have improved.
Staying in Touch with Customers
Our use of social networking has gone from strength to strength, complementing our traditional media outlets and helping us to stay in touch with our customers. The impact of channels including Twitter, Facebook and You Tube can be seen in the figures. Facebook for example added over 100 million users in nine months and these are not just 15 to 24 year olds – the fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55 to 65 year olds.
Manchester Airport set up a Twitter page in August 2009 and acquired a sizeable number of followers interested in flight information, competitions and information on new routes, to name just a few examples.
Our use of Twitter really came into its own when heavy snowfalls affected our operations at Manchester the following winter. Many customers and local travel correspondents went onto Twitter during the snowy weather to speak to us. The information we sent out was also picked up by many of the large new organisations who broadcast our Twitter feed to give their viewers the latest weather updates. We received many tweets from our followers thanking us for using Twitter in this innovative and informative way.
Our Twitter stream "@manairport" is now an essential tool for keeping staff and passengers updated: we now have just under 7,000 followers. It is quick and simple and allows us to deliver timely and accurate information – an approach we are considering at all our airports.
Around 7,000
people now follow our Twitter stream "@manairport"