ABSTRACT
Delivering a high service quality under the safety protocol of COVID-19 is very essential for the sustainable airport operations. The study was intended to determine the impact of COVID-19 on Airport Service Quality (ASQ), customer satisfaction, and travel intention by utilizing a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. A total of 517 Filipinos voluntarily answered an online questionnaire that consists of 92 questions. SEM indicated that the security check, terminal facilities, and services had significant effects on perceived value which subsequently led to customer satisfaction. In addition, travel safety measures had direct effects on Filipinos' travel intention and customer satisfaction. Interestingly, service innovations had no significant impact on customer satisfaction but directly affected travel intention. By understanding the relationship between these factors, airport management could have better decision-making while efficiently and effectively utilizing the resources in these times of uncertainty. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The study illustrates how airport collaborative networks can profit from the richness of data, now available due to digitalization. Using a co-creation process, where the passenger generated content is leveraged to identify possible service improvement areas. A Twitter dataset of 949497 tweets is analyzed from the four years period 2018–2021 – with the second half falling under COVID period - for 100 airports. The Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) method was used for topic discovery and the lexicon-based method for sentiment analysis of the tweets. The COVID-19 related tweets reported a lower sentiment by passengers, which can be an indication of lower service level perceived. The research successfully created and tested a methodology for leveraging user-generated content for identifying possible service improvement areas in an ecosystem of services. One of the outputs of the methodology is a list of COVID-19 terms in the airport context. © 2022, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.
ABSTRACT
None of international airports were prepared for the impact of COVID-19 global pandemic. Fortunately, international airports, also Riga International Airport (hereinafter - RIX), were not caught entirely unprepared for the crisis. Aviation industry has been deeply invested in contactless technology for years. Innovation has been a pillar of strength and growth of aviation industry over the past years. The research problem lies in decreased passenger demand of RIX services due to COVID-19. It strengthens a necessity to establishment of innovative solutions and development of touchless airport which might increase passenger satisfaction and renew airport services. Technology, coupled with heightened focus on automation defines passenger experience at RIX airport. Safety and security of passengers and staff are top priorities for RIX airport. Innovations not only enhance operational efficiency and security, but they also make the airport experience quicker and comfortable for passengers. Although digitalization, automation and touchless airport solutions are shaping the future of RIX airport, human recourses still have a crucial role, particularly in terms of providing friendly service and ensuring passengers enjoying the experience. Methodologically, this study interprets results from a survey, expert interviews, knowledge transfer to empirically measure passenger satisfaction with statistical and observational data. In order to observe local and international airport expert opinions, semi-structured interviews are conducted and analysed with the qualitative data processing method NVivo 12. © 2022 Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies. All rights reserved.