The Russian airport, host of last year’s Routes CIS forum, was recognized for its strong passenger growth in 2012 and a submission that clearly illustrated how airport officials worked closely with their partner carriers to introduce new services.
During the last calendar year, the airport attracted several operators including Aegean Airlines, Alitalia, Ukraine International Airlines, Azerbaijan Airlines, Orenburg Airlines and lesser known carriers, such as Air Bishkek, East Air, Severstal and Kogalymavia.
“Ekaterinburg Koltsovo Airport has delivered true route development results over the past year,” said Nigel Mayes, vice president of commercial routes, UBM Live. “The airport achieved a passenger growth of 13 percent in 2012, and the judges felt with their working relationship with all of their partners they were worthy as the overall winner from the CIS region.”
The award was collected by Andrey Klimenko, deputy commercial director of Koltsovo airport’s parent group, Airports of Regions, and Ilona Fominykh, head of marketing at the company.
“I can’t put into words just how excited I feel that we have been recognized for this prestigious award. It was quite a surprise for us, but a great one,” said Fominykh. “This is a clear sign of appreciation for the efforts our whole team has put into our airline relations and air service development and shows that what we are trying to achieve at Ekaterinburg is a successful formula.”
The Routes Awards recognize and reward the highest standards of marketing activities undertaken by airports and tourism authorities. The 2013 awards will see a number of innovations, including taking a blended approach to the nomination process, meaning the final nominees are those who were shortlisted by airlines using Routes’ online voting form together with a number of airports who were selected by a panel of industry experts drawn from the airline network planning community.
This year, the awards were split into two categories based on the size of the airport.
