A growing number of airport operators are seeking market research services to glean invaluable insights and feedback from travellers on the services they receive, says Blackjack Promotions.

The airport staffing, travel retail and experiential marketing specialist has reported a ‘massive growth’ in demand for market research services from its airport clients this year.

In recent months, the company has not only won new contracts, but extended several existing ones at a number of international airports, including London Stansted Airport (STN), London Luton Airport (LLA) and Dubai International Airport (DXB).

UNDERSTANDING THE PASSENGER EXPERIENCE

At STN, Blackjack’s staff monitored the quality of user experience, including queue lengths, traffic flows, congestion points and other issues relevant to the passenger journey over the busy summer period this year. This is the second year running the company has delivered face-to-face research services at STN.

Blackjack has also supported LLA’s quality survey programme as the airport was keen to understand how passengers felt about its redevelopment programme, launched last year. That contract has now been extended for three years.

Meanwhile at DXB, Blackjack was appointed to deliver research services during 2016 to understand more about the passenger experience and how to improve passenger satisfaction. For this contract, Blackjack had to source multilingual research staff to cover 32 passenger interaction points across four terminals for 365 days a year.

According to the firm, the data delivered by this initial programme was ‘so valuable’ that Dubai has extended the contract until May 2018.

Fiona Tindall, Head of Domestic Retail, Blackjack Promotions, said: “Airports can be incredibly challenging locations to carry out face-to-face research. Travellers can be tired, distracted and stressed, while there may be restrictions on how and where staff can deliver marketing activities and what they can say to people, particularly when you’re working air-side, beyond the security barriers.”

Thanks to its large database of ‘experienced’ and security-cleared ambassadors, Blackjack Promotions claims it has a ‘big advantage’ over other market research providers when conducting face-to-face interviews.

“It’s vital that brand ambassadors working within the airport environment understand how travellers think and how to approach them in a way that reduces stress levels, rather than adding to them, added Tindall.

“Staff need much higher levels of diplomacy and general customer service skills than they would need, say, in a traditional retail environment, public space or festival or event.”