MAI's Customer Experience (CX) Insights Series - 2

MAI's Customer Experience (CX) Insights Series

November 2025

The series explores how airports can evolve from transport hubs into true destinations of hospitality - places where efficiency meets empathy, and every journey feels meaningful.

Introduction

[Part 2] The Implementation: From vision to action

In the second part of our series, we focus on turning the hospitality vision into reality. By aligning strategy with execution, airports can create environments that are not only efficient but also emotionally engaging - fostering trust, comfort, and loyalty among travelers.

From vision to implementation

As we learned in the previous article of our Customer Experience (CX) series, the luxury hospitality industry sets a benchmark on what exceptional service experiences that are personalized, intuitive, and emotionally resonant. But inspiration alone isn't enough. To truly elevate the passenger experience, airports must move from admiration to action.

In today's competitive aviation landscape, CX is not a slogan- it's a strategic imperative. The challenge lies not just in defining a compelling vision, but in implementing it across diverse operational contexts.

This edition explores how airports can bring CX to life, moving from vision to implementation through three essential dimensions which are explained in the following.

1. Breaking down strategic objectives for an organization-wide transformation

A successful CX strategy starts with a deep understanding of corporate goals, brand promise, and stakeholder expectations. True transformation requires alignment across all levels:

Corporate Strategy: Position CX as a core differentiator and growth driver.
Business Unit Strategy: Translate CX goals into actionable departmental priorities.
Functional Strategy: Embed CX through KPIs, service standards, and processes.

This layered approach ensures that CX often demands a cultural and structural shift of the airport's organization to ensure accountability, and drive alignment across departments. A detailed stakeholder mapping process helps identify and categorize both internal and external stakeholders based on their influence and decision-making authority on CX. This enables engagement strategies that enhance alignment and collaboration.

2. Creating targeted experiences that reflect passenger diversity

Once the strategy is aligned, it must be brought to life through design and action. Journey mapping is key: it identifies high-impact touchpoints across departure, transfer, and arrival processes. Combining these maps with persona-based insights enables airports to design experiences tailored to the needs of families, business travelers, PRMs, and even non-flying visitors.

These experiences should not be static. Passenger expectations evolve - so should the experience portfolio. Airports can create a curated mix of signature experiences that reflect their identity - whether through local culture, sustainability, luxury, or technology - while ensuring that core operational processes remain seamless and dependable.

Airport Customer Experience starts with strategy but it majorly succeeds through action. The real impact and "wow-factor" comes when strategic intent is translated into operational excellence across the passengers' journey.

Alexandra Hillers

Junior Consultant

3. Operationalizing CX: Turning strategy into everyday action

Execution is where strategy succeeds - or fails. Airports can sustain momentum by institutionalizing CX through clear processes and accountability tools such as action cards.

Each action card captures:

The source of the issue (e.g. passenger feedback)
The topic and description of the improvement
The responsible department and timeline
Effective criteria to measure impact

Closing

CX is not a one-time initiative but a continuous transformation. A strong CX culture enables airports to adapt to changing passenger expectations, embrace innovation, and align with global trends such as sustainability and personalization.

Yet even the best implementation efforts must be measurable to ensure progress and impact. In Series 3, we will explore how airports can translate the intangible aspects of CX into actionable data-linking emotional engagement to business results.

What steps is your airport taking to turn CX strategy into action?