OREANDA-NEWS. November 05, 2013. Incheon Airport won the World Routes Marketing Award at the World Routes Awards 2013, which was organized by British UBM Aviation at Las Vegas.

Located in Manchester, U.K., UBM Aviation is a business specializing in gathering and analyzing aviation related data worldwide to provide a consulting service for the aviation industry since its creation 2006. Every year, the company selects airports that have shown proved performance in marketing and innovation per region to honor with awards.

This year, Incheon Airport won the Marketing Awards under the category ‘Between 20-50 million passenger’. The airport was given the Marketing Awards in the Asian region at the World Routes Awards 2012 held in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Being the marketing awards winner for the 2nd straight year, Incheon airport proved its marketing capabilities across the world.

As part of its marketing activities, the airport released a transfer package promotion and opened international transfer presentation sessions. Another innovative marketing strategy includes offering free tour for transfer passengers. In addition, Incheon airport successfully hosted CAPA LCCs Conference this year. All of these helped the airport record the highest number of passengers and transfer passengers in history ever since its opening and finally won the coveted award.

Incheon airport has been engaging in attracting new airlines to develop routes by joining aviation conferences such as route forum and visiting headquarters of targeted airlines. The airport also launched new airport charge scheme, incentive plans and various joint programs to attract airline companies.

As a result, Incheon could add long-haul routes by signing with American Airlines which is a founding member of One World and ranked third in terms of traffic performance of 2012 IATA Airline Rankings; Ethiopian Airlines, one of the largest airlines in Africa; Czech Airlines that fly Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, low cost carriers from six airlines including Scoot Airlines also commenced short-haul services to Incheon.

The airport’s efforts to launch more airlines for diversified routes continued in this year’s event, where Incheon’s delegation discussed prospects for new services with executives from Delta Airlines, Alitalia, Tiger Airways and Vanilla Air some of which decided to commence service to Incheon.

“Now with already strong routes to Americas, Incheon Airport wants to plug the holes in its route map by having more to Europe and Asia. Such a balanced view for developing routes would help it lead the competition for being hub airport beating its rivals such as Beijing and Narita.” President Chang-Soo Jung said, who was inundated with calls for one-on-one meetings with him during the event especially from airports in Los Angeles, Chicago, Copenhagen, Prague and Surabaja.

In a booth of Incheon Airport equipped with state-of-the art facilities to show its 2nd terminal which is expected to be completed by 2017, the airport promoted its routes that link 190 cities, and service performance to passersby. A food stand served with traditional Korean food attracted people during the event, who also got chances to enjoy traditional Korean music performance and handicrafts.

Meanwhile UBM Live recommended Incheon Airport to host the 2016 World Routes Conference and Incheon responded positively to the ask.