Abstract
The present chapter aims to evaluate and prioritize service quality attributes at airports from a post-COVID-19 perspective. To achieve this objective, the full consistency method (FUCOM) was employed to analyze a proposed hierarchical framework. A thorough literature review was conducted to formulate the proposed framework, which includes the dimensions of access, airport environment, airport facilities, check-in, security, and 19 service attributes linked to these dimensions. To establish the viability of the suggested approach, data were collected from a team of decision-makers through the use of a structured questionnaire. The results of the research indicated that the access dimension is the most significant, with the convenience of ground transportation being the most important attribute. Conversely, the least significant attribute identified was the efficiency of COVID-19 test centers. The research demonstrates that the FUCOM methodology is an effective tool for enhancing airport service quality.
TopIntroduction
The civil aviation industry is a service sector with a significant growth trend. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) reports that annual passenger numbers in 2019 totaled 4.5 billion, a 3.6% increase compared to the preceding year (ICAO, 2020). Due to commercialization and escalating passenger demands, airports that facilitate passenger traffic flow face significant competition. As such, meeting passenger expectations and preferences is essential for airports to survive (Gajewicz et al., 2022). Therefore, the provision of high service standards at airports has become critical. Airport Council International (ACI) concluded that a 1% increase in passenger satisfaction creates a 1.5% increase in non-aeronautical revenues (ACI, 2016). Existing literature also establishes that service quality is a significant antecedent of passenger satisfaction (Bezerra & Gomes, 2020; Halpern & Mwesiumo, 2021). Similarly, Prentice and Kadan (2019) discovered a strong relationship between airport service quality and the intention to reuse the airport. Therefore, scholars grew interested in service quality as a result of its influence on crucial outcomes such as customer satisfaction and non-aeronautical revenues (Bakır et al., 2022; Halpern & Mwesiumo, 2021; Pandey, 2016).
Airport operators have endeavored to improve customer service after realizing that delighted customers spend more money. For this reason, superior service quality has become the main strategy of airports to increase their market share in competitive markets (Akşit Aşık, 2019). In the airport literature, service quality refers to the superiority of service delivery. Therefore, the most critical step in providing high-quality services is understanding passenger expectations. Meeting or exceeding passenger expectations will make passengers satisfied with airport services (Bakır et al., 2022).
Although the civil aviation industry enjoyed significant growth, at the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in China and eventually devastated the rest of the world. As such, the civil aviation industry has likely seen its greatest challenge to date, with borders closing and nearly all air transport activity coming to a halt. The number of flights recorded by Eurocontrol in April 2020 declined by 87% compared to the same month of the previous year (Eurocontrol, 2020). Similarly, ACI (2021) reported that passenger traffic decreased by 64.6% in 2020.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Discretionary Activity: Activities such as shopping and dining that are not part of the airport’s core product, the transportation service.
Sentiment Analysis: It is a natural language processing (NLP) technique that recognizes the emotional tone of a text.
SERVQUAL: It is the most widely used measurement model in the service quality domain consisting of five dimensions.
Voice of the Customer: Voice of the customer, abbreviated as VoC, describes customer feedback about their experience with products or services.
Aeronautical Revenue: It refers to the revenue from the operations of aircraft related to the process of transporting passenger and freight.
Topic Modeling: It refers to a statistical modeling technique for determining the abstract “themes” that appear in a collection of texts.
Skytrax: It is an international air transport rating organization dedicated to improving the quality of customer experience for aviation companies.