On the 14th World Route Development Forum, which this year took place in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, Brussels Airport for the first time won the Airport Marketing Award. For the European region Brussels Airport shares the first place with Athens Airport, which also won the award the previous three years.

The World Route Development Forum is the annual global conference for the development of new airline routes. Over 250 airlines and 350 airports meet to discuss new route opportunities for the coming seasons. The Forum is the place to be for any airport to meet the many airlines that consider opening new routes or extending their existing flight offer. Most airports put their best foot forward with well-targeted presentations, detailed market surveys and a strong story.

The Marketing Awards is a fringe event of these “Routes” meetings, where the airlines can indicate the airports that they believe distinguished themselves with regard to the presentations they use to convince airlines of new market opportunities, the quality of the market surveys and the marketing communication of the participating airports.

Per region five airports are put on the short list, which are then assessed by a jury. Among the large European airports Athens, Brussels, Dublin, Istanbul and Manchester were short-listed.

Leon Verhallen, Head of Airline Business Development, accepted the award on behalf of Brussels Airport. Wilfried Van Assche, CEO of Brussels Airport, was delighted with this acknowledgement: “For the past two and a half years we have worked on the development of the Brussels Airport network with both a new team and a new marketing approach. We try to offer our passengers the most attractive network possible in terms of direct destinations served and frequencies. So far our efforts have been very successful: no less than 14 new passenger and cargo airlines have started operating from Brussels, putting Brussels Airport back on the map as an important player among the larger European airports”.