US: Airports use Twitter to ease traveller concerns

Before arriving at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, Joe Carella, the assistant dean of executive education at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona’s Phoenix campus, checks the airport’s Facebook page. The airport also has a Twitter handle, @PHXSkyHarbor, with more than 21,000 followers. That account toggles between passenger needs and promotion of airport services. Over Memorial Day weekend, it mollified one passenger who complained about rudeness, and that was followed by another who wanted to know if PlayStation 4s are allowed in airplane cabins. (They are.) “The goal is to communicate with customers with timely relevant information and promote services,” said an airport spokeswoman. With airplanes often filled almost to the brim and air travel increasingly unpredictable, airports have begun using social media to communicate with passengers. The hope is to turn what the industry calls dwell time, the two to three hours that passengers spend between curbside check-in and boarding, into a positive experience — one that can be lucrative for the airport. “They want to make sure the passenger feels his or her time and money is well spent,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Travel Group. The most recent study on airports and social media, “The Power of Social Media for Airports,” conducted in 2013 by the management consultants LeighFisher, found that nearly a third of airports worldwide maintained Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts. European and Canadian airports were the leading users.<br/>