The U.S. airport industry’s passenger sentiment score dropped 1.1% as airports experienced more challenges with concessions operations and service quality.
July 29, 2022 @ 10am EDT
During the past 7 calendar days, the U.S. airport industry’s overall sentiment score declined 1.1% to 7.90 from 7.99. The decrease in passenger sentiment is a reflection of an overall perception that airports and their vendors are suffering from the increased difficulty in hiring concessions staff and other front-line workers. Many airports have been hosting job fairs to try to fill the gap, but in the current economic environment, it has become a significant challenge to hire new employees.
GlidePathCX continues to engage millions of airport passengers each week by reaching passengers on their mobile and laptop devices while they are in the airport. The majority of these electronic communications contained a Passenger Experience Survey, with overall sentiment measured on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best).
GlidePathCX’s Sentiment Score was calculated for each airport on a near real-time basis via the company’s proprietary Insight360SM dashboard. The resulting data was then aggregated to calculate a sentiment score for the U.S. airport industry as a whole.
For the week ending July 29th, the percentage of business traveler respondents was 20.7% vs. 79.3% for leisure travelers.
As airports and airlines struggle to efficiently serve the traveling public, passengers will need to continue to remain patient and to build in extra buffer time as they travel. The shortage of airline and airport industry staff is even having an effect on the disembarkation process. The problem was highlighted in a recent BBC news article. A British Airways cabin crew member based at Heathrow airport in London summed up the problem, saying “a shortage of airport workers and cleaners is behind delays in getting passengers and crew off the plane, including people who use wheelchairs.”
GlidePathCX will continue to closely monitor airport passenger sentiment and related insights and trends.
