Changi Airport has won the World’s Best Airport for 2023, at the World Airport Awards held in Amsterdam yesterday. This is the 12th time Changi Airport has won the award, which is given out by Skytrax. Changi Airport was also awarded Best Airport Dining, Best Airport for Leisure Activities, and Best Airport in Asia.
In second place was Hamad International Airport in Doha, with Haneda Airport coming in third. Seoul Incheon and Paris Charles De Gaulle rounded off the top 5. You can see the full list of 2023 award winners at Skytrax’s World Airport Awards website.
Per Skytrax,
The Awards are based on the World Airport Survey questionnaires completed by over 60 nationalities of airport customers during the survey period, which operated from August 2022 to February 2023. The survey evaluated the customer experience across airport service and product key performance indicators – from check in, arrivals, transfers, shopping, security / immigration through to departure at the gate.
Skytrax World Airport Awards
I don’t know of anyone who has ever been approached to do a Skytrax survey, and based on my experience Skytrax don’t have the resources for that, nor do I know anyone who has actually completed an online Skytrax survey. That’s not to say no one has ever completed a Skytrax survey online, but if you see the methodology on their website, they talk about the number of nationalities, but not the number of respondents. Read into that what you will.
That said, I’d argue the top 3 are probably more or less deserving (I don’t have personal experience of Hamad International), while Paris-CDG would only ever be able to get anywhere near the top if this were solely based on Terminal 2 and excludes Terminal 1 completely.
My thoughts on Skytrax
In my previous employment, I had the…opportunity to engage with Skytrax over a certain rating they were giving out. I don’t want to get sued here, so I’m not going to go into specifics of how the assessment process went, or what rating it was.
I can’t speak about the airport awards specifically, but in terms of airline ratings, anyone who knows anything about Skytrax takes them with a massive pinch of salt. Remember when Lufthansa seemingly became a 5-star airline on the basis of a Business class product that was years away and now only expected to enter service this year?
I won’t go so far to say airlines (and airports) directly pay Skytrax for the accolades (like I said, I don’t want to get sued), and I don’t have any knowledge of such arrangements. The airline ratings are based on audits Skytrax conducts, and as anyone who has conducted or undergone an audit, there’s always a certain flexibility to achieve the desired audit outcome. There are indirect ways to influencing the audit result, and you can bet some airlines will employ as many of these indirect means to ensure they get the rating/ranking they want.
Considering most who follow the industry don’t believe in Skytrax, then why do airlines bother? I know some airline executives who don’t see highly of Skytrax either. For many years Singapore Airlines didn’t bother participating as well. So why does Skytrax garner the attention and have the traction it does? This is where you have to credit them, for doing a great job in hyping themselves up, and making them look like a true recognition of quality, at least in the eyes of the less-knowledgeable travellers. There are many people who think Skytrax is reputable, but these are the causal travellers. They’ve managed to reach the point where airlines feel the need to participate, no matter how credible the airlines believes Skytrax is. I suspect for some airlines, getting a certain Skytrax rating/ranking is a KPI. Because of that, they’re relevant no matter what you or I think of them.
I’ve seen samples of Skytrax’s audit reports, and while they are somewhat thorough with the scope, I’d argue the audit outcomes aren’t much better than what I, or any prominent travel blogger can produce. In my opinion, the insights aren’t that deep. However, their wide reach does enable them to share (non-confidential) information from across the industry, benefiting the airline being audited who may not have the capacity to conduct extensive benchmarking.
Conclusion
Changi Airport has won the World’s Best Airport for 2023, for a 12th time. It beat out Hamad International and Tokyo Haneda, who completed the top 3. These awards are from Skytrax, so I’d say to take that into consideration when looking at the rankings.