Kilimanjaro — KILIMANJARO is Africa's highest peak but as it turned out last week, even the airport named after the Mountain is also being billed as the continent's highest ranking and best performing international terminal.
Kilimanjaro International Airport was crowned overall winner of the Routes Africa Marketing Awards for the second year running.
KIA managed to beat both its larger busier next-door neighbour, Jomo Kenyatta International (JKIA) of Nairobi and its incountry sibling, Julius Kambarage Nyerere International (JKNIA) of Dar-es-Salaam in getting the international top trophy.
But the best achievement for KIA probably should be the terminal's strength in thrashing the continent giants such as Johannesburg's OR Tambo International and the Cape Town International Airports of South-Africa, Cairo International of Egypt and Casablanca's 'Mohammed V' International of Morocco.
The winners of the 4th regional heat of the Routes Marketing Awards were recently announced during the Routes Africa Networking Evening in Zimbabwe.
Speaking later on at the Kilimanjaro Airport's Waving Bay, meeting room, the Managing Director of Kilimanjaro Airports Development Company (KADCO), Mr Mattijs Smith, expressed his management pride in winning the overall Routes Africa award for the second year in a row.
"This award is a true recognition by our airline customers for strengthening our existing routes and achieving a record growth of 24 per cent in traffic in 2013," stated Mr Smith but reminded that, KIA will again get to contest for the World Throne in Spain next September 2014.
That is where fingers need to be crossed now, because being the overall winner from the African Continent; Kilimanjaro International Airport has been automatically shortlisted for the World Routes Marketing Awards that are to be announced in Chicago this September.
Last year, KIA took the second position on the globe. KIA will thus enter the world's travel ring again, this time contesting against Tampa International Airport, Abu Dhabi International Airport and City Airport Bremen that were announced as overall winners from the Americas, Asia and Europe regions respectively, earlier in the year.
The annual Routes awards are highly regarded as the most prestigious awards in the industry as they are voted for and judged by members of the global airline network planning community.
During the awards event Ms Katie Bland, the Director Routes stated: "We were delighted with the high level of submissions and congratulate all those that were nominated, those recognized as Highly Commended by the panel of judges and of course all of the section winners.
Kilimanjaro International Airport has once again shown how seriously it takes network development and their submission included examples of their marketing material and their dedication to improving routes to their airport.
During the African Routes' event, Kilimanjaro was also named as the winner from the Under 4 million passengers' Airports category, with Durban King Shaka International Airport honoured from the Over 4 million passengers listing while Madagascar Tourism Board ranked top in the Destination Marketing Category.
The shortlisted finalists were nominated by airlines and a respected panel of judges, made up of senior members of the airline network planning community from the region, then reviewed the lists and submissions from the nominated airports, in order to determine the winners.
The judging panel consisted of top experts in travel and tourism industry including Mrs Rosemary Ramakagapola, the Network Planning Analyst of South African Airways; Mr Richard Bodin, Fastjet's Chief Commercial Officer, Mr Jonay Lobo-Torres, Revenue Management for Binter Canaries and Miss Cynthia Jepkemboi, Senior Strategic Planning Analyst of Kenya Airways.
As we have seen, KIA, in addition to winning the overall African award, it also scored in the top list of the under 4 million passengers, while the King Shaka International Airport of Durban, topped the over 4 million terminals' listing and in the Best Destination Market slot, the Madagascar Tourism Board managed to beat others, including the Tanzania Tourist Board which took the fourth position.
Routes, founded in 1995 organises world-renowned airline and airport networking events through its regional and global Route Development Forums. Each year, there is one global event and one regional event in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and CIS respectively.
Though Kilimanjaro was named best airport in Africa, KIA is a far cry terminal when compared to the real giants of the continent's landing sites with OR Tambo International Airport, in Johannesburg, South Africa being the largest of all while the Cairo International Airport of Egypt is the second largest terminal.
Returning to South Africa again, Cape Town International and Durban's King Shaka International Airports are the continent's third and fourth largest terminals respectively while Sharm El-Sheikh International and Hurghada International Airports both in Egypt take the fifth and sixth positions respectively.
Casablanca's Mohammed V International Airport of Morocco, Lagos' Murtala Mohammed International Airport of Nigeria, Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport of Kenya and Port Elizabeth International Airport in South Africa rank from the seventh to the tenth positions respectively.
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