Cochin Airport Eyes Arrival Duty Free

Cochin International Airport in India is showing a 30% increase in sales revenue over last year with the majority of this coming from non aviation areas.

The passenger count is up 10% for international arriving and departing to 2.6 million showing that customers are spending more on duty free merchandise. In order to enhance future growth the Cochin International Duty Free shops are focusing upon an "online business model". This would allow customers to place their orders online and take delivery of their duty free goods upon arrival at Cochin Airport at the arrivals duty free shop.


The software for this pre-order system is now being implemented and will go live soon.

Carnival Cruise Lines starts new port facility in Dominican Republic

The largest cruise line company in the world, Carnival Corporation, has broken ground on a new port facility in Bay of Maimon, Dominican Republic. The $65 million project near Puerto Plata on the north coast of the island is a joint venture between Carnival and the Rannik family of Grupo B&R.

  

The new port facility will accommodate 8,000 passengers and 2,000 crew per day with two berths for ships. The first year will see 250,000 passengers with duty free shopping facilities in the terminal building. The scheduled opening date is in 2014.

Social Media takes hold of Europe's Airports

In a new report "Digital Report 2012" by ACI Europe it has emerged that Europe's airports are creating a direct link with it's customers through social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, with airports in Central Europe being the most proactive.

The report highlights the fact that over 33% of Europe's airports are developing or have mobile "apps" to give the passenger more live information - this includes corporate communications, crisis communications, customer service, informal customer relationship building, and commercial promotion.

Gatwick Airport has 30,000 Twitter followers

The chief objective of most airports is to make information available so as to make the passenger experience as hassle free as possible.

London Gatwick Airport has recently been honoured with Twitter's "blue tick" of authority with it's 24 / 7 Twitter customer service support. It now has 30,000 Twitter followers plus a website and Facebook site.

In Poland, Warsaw Chopin Airport has over 11,000 Twitter followers sending information out in both polish and English. The tweets are made up on updates on flight information, traveller tips and special offers in the airport duty free shops.

It is expected that social media will take a more proactive role in the future.

Survey supports a "fat tax" for overweight fliers

A recent survey carried out by HolidayExtras.com, the website specialising in hassle free add ons, reported that over 48% of respondents were in favour of additional flying charges for obese flying passengers.

Over 51% of those questioned believed that over weight passengers should pay extra because of their contribution to additional fuel consumption in the same way that other passengers pay for excess baggage.

This highly controversial move has been referred to in the past as a "fat tax" and was subject to a Ryanair survey on fliers in the past of which a third supported such a move.

It was also discussed by some US airlines that overweight passengers should in fact buy an additional flight ticket or the airline offer some of the revenue to the passenger next to the obese person.

Such measure would allow other weight reduction measures carried out by airlines such as reducing the amount of duty free luggage.