Largest Routes event in Europe ever

BUDAPEST, Hungary – The Routes Awards recognize and reward the highest standards of marketing activities undertaken by airports and tourism authorities. At the 8th Routes Europe awards event, over 1,000 aviation professionals witnessed the presentation of the awards. To date, this has been the largest route development event for the entire Europe region.

Munich Airport was announced as the overall winner of the third heat of this year’s Routes Awards last night at a spectacular networking evening which took place at Terminal One of Budapest Airport.

“We are really looking forward now to the World Routes awards, and we are very optimistic,” said Alexander Schroll, Director, Traffic Development for Munich Airport, speaking just after receiving the award. “We are very happy to receive this award and very excited because the competition in Europe is becoming very fierce between the airports, so it’s great to be number one again after a couple of years!”

Nigel Mayes, VP Commercial, Routes, UBM Live, commented: “After much deliberation, our panel of judges felt that Munich should take the overall winner crown due to quality of their submission combined with their consistent growth and ability to continually attract new airlines including Ukraine International Airlines and Vueling.”

The 2013 awards will see a number of innovations including taking a blended approach to the nomination process, meaning the final nominees included a number of the fastest-growing airports in Europe, those who were shortlisted by airlines using our 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 three categories based on the size of the airport and also a new tourism award for best destination marketing campaign by a tourism authority.

A complete list of companies shortlisted under each award category is below:

OVER 20 MILLION PASSENGERS

Munich Airport – Winner
Rome FCO Airport – Highly Commended
Vienna International Airport – Highly Commended
Frankfurt Airport
Istanbul Ataturk Airport, TAV

4 – 20 MILLION PASSENGERS

Athens International Airport – Winner
Dublin Airport – Highly Commended
Marseille Provence Airport – Highly Commended
Bucharest Henri Coanda International Airport
Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport
Prague Airport

UNDER 4 MILLION PASSENGERS

Aberdeen International Airport – Winner
Krakow Airport – Highly Commended
Tallinn Airport – Highly Commended
London City Airport
London Southend Airport

DESTINATION MARKETING AWARD

Turismo de Tenerife – Winner
Malta Tourism – Highly Commended
Valencia Tourism – Highly Commended
Wonderful Copenhagen
Tourism Ireland

As overall winner of this regional heat, Munich Airport will be automatically shortlisted for the World Routes Airport Marketing Awards which will take place at the event in Las Vegas, October 5-8, 2013, joining San Diego International Airport and Changi Airport Group who were announced as overall winners of the Americas and Asia heats respectively, earlier in the year.