I recently interviewed Mike Taylor, Practice Lead for Travel Intelligence at J.D. Power to discuss the results of their North America Airport Satisfaction Study and other things he’s seeing in the travel industry. I didn’t expect the interview to be long but Mike really impressed me with all his insights.
First of all, he’s been working for J.D. Power for the last 23 years. He’s based in Westport, Connecticut, which is near where I grew up and he travels a fair bit. If you watch the interview on YouTube or listen to it on my podcast, you will hear the reasons why Miami and New York’s JFK airports topped their mega airport list and it makes sense.
I learned a lot from Mike, including that Singapore knows that one of the ways to always be on top of customer satisfaction surveys is to always have new and clean bathrooms. That’s why they remodel their bathrooms every three years. There’s also an attendant in the bathroom 24/7.
Some of the other tidbits Mike imparted were that women do not like any water on the bathroom counters and men … well, you will have to watch/listen to the interview (towards the end) to find out what we don’t like.
Since J.D. Power is about to come out with a car rental survey, I asked Mike if ‘carmageddon’ is over and if prices will start to level off. He said they’re not levelling off, they won’t until at least Q1 of next year and that places like Hawaii will take much longer.
This year’s study finds that overall satisfaction reached a record high but began to trend down in the second and third quarters of 2021. The reason? More people were flying, and airports were struggling to deliver the traditional experience. Specifically, food/beverage and retail options were rather limited, due to labor shortages, something felt more at medium-sized airports than larger ones with higher passenger volumes.
You can find more information here: jdpower.com
