Challenge
With more than 80 million annual passengers across five terminals, Heathrow Airport is one of the largest and most international airports in the world. Heathrow thus caters to a vast number of passenger segments with very different needs from budget leisure travelers to VIP business travelers, from Americans to Zambians, from well-wishers to ‘meters and greeters’. To effectively cater to all these needs, it is crucial that Heathrow understands what is important to each passenger segment at every step of their journey.
Approach
Heathrow has in many ways been the mother of all aviation market research and Epinion has since 2014 been the partner to review services, processes, technology and facilities to continuously adapt to passenger needs. To do this, Epinion established a market research field force operation in the airport in record time with 10 field managers and 100 interviewers to conduct about 200,000 interviews annually – also for airlines, retail & consumer brands. Epinion has won several awards incl. the 2018 MRS Operations Award.
Resolution
The insights from the 12 core tracking surveys and numerous ad hoc deep dives have been the basis for many passenger journey and retail environment improvements and innovations. However, in Heathrow this also plays another crucial role as regulatory documentation of the airport operations to ensure continuous improvements and reduce costs as well as feed directly into and cover 11 of the 21 Airport Management KP’Is. The quality requirements are therefore of highest order.
