Overview
Airports worldwide are facing growing expectations for service quality and seamless passenger experiences. In a competitive aviation environment where Skytrax ratings and customer feedback heavily influence airport reputations, the ability to monitor and analyze real-time public sentiment is critical.
This white paper explores how text mining and sentiment analysis, particularly through social media monitoring, can provide powerful insights to optimize Airport Service Quality (ASQ). You will learn the best approach to unlock more value to improve passenger experience through data-driven insights from social media listening.
By leveraging examples from global airports including Malaysia Airports, we demonstrate how this digital intelligence can enhance decision-making and drive service excellence.
The importance of social media monitoring & listening for airports
The aviation industry is undergoing rapid digital transformation, and with it, passenger expectations have shifted. Travelers now voice their opinions instantly across platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Google Reviews.
More importantly, first time travelers to a destination often judge their travelling experience in a new country, especially upon arrival at the relevant airports, making overall airport experience a crucial factor to the country’s overall reputation.
Traditional survey-based methods (such as ASQ by ACI) often lag behind in capturing real-time customer perception and this leads to a host of reputation and operational issues that can undermine safety and inconvenience of passengers.
In fact, the idea of using social media to measure sentiment of airport service quality is not new, with airports such as Malaysia Airports pioneering the approach since 2013.
To remain competitive as a global hub and destination, airports are turning to social media monitoring which includes advance text mining and sentiment analysis to track, analyze, and act.
“Our 12-year experience in airport operations and aviation showed that advance sentiment analysis have brought many benefits including operational improvements, upgrades and proactive maintenance that brings value to passenger experience” said Shahid Shayaa, CEO of Berkshire Media and former aviation turnaround expert.
He added that ASQ provides a strong foundation in assessing the overall airport passenger satisfaction from social media data, but challenges remain for airport operators wanting to get the most from areas such as sentiment analysis of airline passengers going through the airports.
“Social media monitoring adds a strong layer of data-driven feedback and insights that bring more value in operational meetings with airport managers and top executives” he added, and “this justifies the investment in analytical tools and services to ensure the data-driven insights are not biased”.
Social Insights on Malaysia Airports
Malaysia airports experience a rapid growth of tourist arrivals and passenger movement has record a 120% jump on annual average in the past 5 years as Malaysia is gaining its position as a top destination after the global pandemic (COVID19).
Malaysia Airports welcomed 12 new airlines in 2024, including Air Macau, Iraqi Airways, Turkmenistan Airlines, Cambodia Airways, Qingdao Airlines, Loong Air, AirAsia Cambodia, and Air India – which has predominantly fueled the total social media conversations to 863,727 mentions across various channels and platforms.
Our data showed that passengers are actively talking about their airport experience in line with passenger increase as Malaysia airport operator, MAHB, are stepping up its operations to cater the rise of international and domestic airline passengers.
| Year | Total Airport Passengers | Year-on-Year Growth (%) | Share of Voice (mentions) |
| 2021 | 4,011,838 | – | 417,908 |
| 2022 | 25,399,296 | 533.10% | 231,782 |
| 2023 | 47,224,000 | 85.90% | 453,874 |
| 2024 | 57,008,869 | 20.70% | 864,727 |
Malaysia Airport leads the industry in their data-driven approaches by analyzing passenger sentiment using social data at various touch points based on ASQ attributes.
The significant increase of social media conversation brings better social insights (from social sentiment analysis and media monitoring) to improve passenger travel journey at various checkpoints, notably during pre-depature check-ins and waiting areas, retail experience, cleanliness and arrival experience.
Airport Service Quality (ASQ): Monitoring Airport Performance From Social Data
Monitoring airport service quality (ASQ) is the backbone support to elevate airport operations. For Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB), these ASQ attributes developed by Skytrax (the world’s leading airport rating organization) have helped various business units to undertake preventive and proactive measures in the last 10 to 15 years.
Airport managers use ASQ as a basis behind media monitoring but there are other topics that are deemed insightful to get the best from social analytics or listening tools.
Essentially Skytrax evaluates airports around the world based on over 39 service quality parameters, and some of the core attributes include:
- Cleanliness of terminals and washrooms
- Ease of check-in and security procedures
- Wi-Fi and digital services
- Wayfinding and signage
- Availability of seating and comfort in waiting areas
- Staff service – friendliness, language skills, and efficiency
- Shopping, food, and beverage experience
- Baggage claim speed and efficiency
- Immigration and customs efficiency
- Transportation and connectivity access
If you need to know how the airport service quality attributes affect the Skytrax ranking, we have done a summary in this article.
With our deep-dive experience in airport operations for more than 10 years, our team in Berkshire Media adopted a thorough assessment of how each of the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) attribute may impact the customer experience based on 39 service quality checkpoints.
Social media monitoring helps short-term operational fixes and major airport upgrades when used together with deep-dive sentiment analysis on key service quality areas.
Our analysis and experience suggest that the volume of social media conversation for each ASQ varies significantly depending on the seasonality (eg: long holidays may cause spike in conversations related to cleanliness) and one-off events or incidences.
This stresses the importance of ASQ vis-à-vis the impact to customer experience as illustrated in our analysis derived from millions of social media data from 30 airports in Malaysia.
Airport Service Quality (ASQ) Attributes and Impact to Customer Experience
| No. | ASQ Attribute | Impact to Customer Experience |
| 1 | Toilet cleanliness | Very High |
| 2 | Terminal cleanliness | High |
| 3 | Check-in process efficiency | High |
| 4 | Security procedures | High |
| 5 | Wi-Fi connectivity | High |
| 6 | Mobile charging stations | Moderate |
| 7 | Airport mobile app usability | Moderate |
| 8 | Signage clarity and visibility | Moderate |
| 9 | Availability of flight information displays | Moderate |
| 10 | Ease of wayfinding | High |
| 11 | Availability of seating | Moderate |
| 12 | Comfort of seating areas | Moderate |
| 13 | Gate area cleanliness | Moderate |
| 14 | Air conditioning and temperature control | Moderate |
| 15 | Noise levels in terminal | Low |
| 16 | Efficiency of immigration | High |
| 17 | Efficiency of customs | High |
| 18 | Friendliness of security staff | High |
| 19 | Helpfulness of airport staff | High |
| 20 | Language skills of staff | Moderate |
| 21 | Speed of baggage delivery | High |
| 22 | Handling of lost baggage | High |
| 23 | Cleanliness of baggage area | Moderate |
| 24 | Shopping options | Moderate |
| 25 | Pricing of retail products | Low |
| 26 | Variety of food & beverage | Moderate |
| 27 | Quality of food & beverage | Moderate |
| 28 | Pricing of food & beverage | Low |
| 29 | Cleanliness of food areas | Moderate |
| 30 | Availability of trolleys | Moderate |
| 31 | Functionality of elevators/escalators | Moderate |
| 32 | Availability of public transportation | Moderate |
| 33 | Taxi/rideshare accessibility | Moderate |
| 34 | Parking facilities | Moderate |
| 35 | Shuttle bus efficiency | Low |
| 36 | Check-in kiosk availability | Moderate |
| 37 | Boarding gate efficiency | Moderate |
| 38 | Overall airport ambience | High |
| 39 | Perceived safety/security | Very High |
Note: These parameters form the basis of Skytrax World Airport Awards and are critical indicators of ASQ that should be monitored daily, weekly or monthly.
Social Media Monitoring: How Text Mining and Sentiment Analysis Enhance ASQ
To get the best result from social media monitoring for airports, our team have developed advance sentiment tagging based on aviation-specific domain across ASQ attributes. It means, specific keywords unique to the aviation sector, airline passenger experience and airport operations were identified (tagged) based on our 10-year experience in monitoring reputation risks for more than 30 international and domestic airports.
Additionally, we adopt text mining that underpins the sentiment analysis to extract meaningful insights from unstructured textual data that sometimes are unique to multi-lingual countries such as Malaysia.
Social media users express opinion on their airport experiences using complex linguistic including dialects or nuances that are unique to the local language. Only few companies are well equipped to process sentiment with high degree of accuracy.
When coupled with real-time monitoring, data-cleaning and sentiment analysis, airports can get the best output to manage short-term and long-term reputation risks. When combined with airport operational data and official airlines customer complaint feedback system, social media monitoring brings greater benefits:
- Detect positive, negative, or neutral sentiments at scale, or by accessing historical data
- Identify frequently mentioned issues from past or present trends
- Recognize emerging service disruptions (e.g., lost luggage, delays)
- Benchmark sentiment by language, location, or time period
- Provide real-time dashboards to aid operational decisions
- Identifying detractors and advocates from deep-dive profiling
Developing Sentiment Analysis Framework For Airport Operations
The best Sentiment Analysis (SA) framework for airport operators incorporates a combination of processes, features and functionalities derived from social media monitoring tools such real-time monitoring, data cleaning, integrated media monitoring and performance reports, automated Whatsapp alerts, access to historical data and custom AI-driven insights verified by industry experts.
Social listening tools from Brandwatch, Talkwalker, Socio and others provide limited capabilities to harness the power of data insights. The best sentiment analysis incorporates data processing and actionable insights for airport managers to prioritize what truly matters to the brand and customers.
When applied in the context of managing reputation risks, these listening tools and capabilities help airport managers and communication advisory team to work seamlessly to improve customer experience across ASQ attributes and other core airport functional departments.
Some of the best sentiment analysis media monitoring features for airports includes the following:
A) Real-time Service Recovery:
Real-time social media monitoring including daily or hourly Whatsapp alerts are useful for airport operators to respond to service failures quickly in a timely manner. The real time media monitoring tool can be handy for airport and communication managers although the daily monitoring operations are usually performed by a 3rd party with deep-dive industry experience. Berkshire Media is amongst the bet social media monitoring providers in Malaysia with real-time monitoring capabilities to manage reputations risks for more than 30 airports in Malaysia.
B) Integrated Data-Driven Media Insights
Having an integrated media reports incorporating both traditional media and social media channels are useful for airport communication and marketing managers in recent years. Having a consolidated view of communications efforts (i.e both PR, advertising and marketing) and on-ground operational actions bring greater visibility to achieve shared KPIs in the airport service quality. The flexibility beyond automated system reporting capabilities (eg: PDF, PPTX and other formats) is key in adhering to dynamic changes that occur in the aviation sector.
C) Clean Data
Having a set of clean data from social media channels is the backbone for quality data-driven insights for airport managers, airport operators or communications team working in the aviation sector. Approximately 30-40% error can occur when cleaning the text data for airports, and please ensure you are partnering with an experience vendor, agency or firm that demonstrate data cleaning capabilities.
D) Data Classification & Tagging
Most social media companies are not equipped to handle the categorization of data after the data cleaning is completed. Airport operators must embed features in the processes to ensure that data are correctly classified into the airport service quality (ASQ) attributes, and also based into the customer or passenger journey.
Berkshire Media is amongst the best social media monitoring companies that provide deep-dive data processing capabilities for more than 30 airports in Malaysia with millions of social data being processed, tagged and classified according to the service quality category, reputation risk category and business units.
E) Industry Experience
Partnering with social media monitoring companies with strong aviation experience brings greater value in understanding complex regulatory and business challenges. Additionally, media monitoring vendor or social analytic companies with deep-dive industry experience in airline or airport passenger experience provide an added advantage in strategizing, prioritizing and identifying short-term and long-term improvements to elevate the airport experience.
F) Benchmarking & Competitive Intelligence:
Having the capability to conduct periodic sentiment analysis on regional peers helps airport operators to be ahead of the curve in its digital transformation to elevate customer experience, strengthening its position to be the best transport hub in the region. Social insights bring value to the type of quality content that brings the highest user engagement to airport managers while balancing the feedback that they receive from daily airport operations. In some areas, this bring greater prioritization on the communications or marketing effort vis-à-vis what other similar airport operators are doing.
Applications: Social Media Monitoring Applications for Airport Service Attributes
Here are some real-life applications when using our time-tested approach in social media monitoring / sentiment analysis for airports based on airport service quality (ASQ) core attributes.
ASQ #1: Cleanliness and Sanitation
- Example Insight: High-frequency mentions of “dirty toilets” on Twitter at a specific terminal indicate urgent action for immediate toilet maintenance and long term action for toilet upgrades
- Action: Real-time alert triggers immediate janitorial dispatch or issuance of alert to the supervisor.
- Case Study: Changi Airport uses Twitter sentiment data to adjust cleaning schedules dynamically as opposed to the traditional fixed-schedule
ASQ #2: Check-In and Security Efficiency
- Example Insight: Negative Facebook reviews about long queues at KLIA immigration, a recurring issue during peak (holiday) season or Hajj season
- Action: Malaysia Airports deploys reinforcement staff during peak hours and working with immigration officers to increase manpower.
- Tools: Recurring sentiment analysis shows queue bottlenecks during year end and school holidays, especially during evening flight to Europe.
ASQ#3: Wi-Fi and Digital Infrastructure
- Example Insight: Reddit discussions highlight inconsistent Wi-Fi connectivity in Jakarta Airport which caused inconveniences to business travelers.
- Action: IT teams reallocate bandwidth or fix access point issues in waiting lounges and fixing the weak signals in highly-populated areas of the airport.
- Tools: Social media monitoring picked up low volume conversations but consistently appearing by customers who are travelling on business during weekdays.
ASQ #4: Wayfinding and Navigation
- Example Insight: Instagram posts tagging “confusing signs” in Heathrow T5, which is a common problem due to the airport upgrades that have been going on for more than a year
- Action: Design teams audit sign placements and update maps at the arrival hall and baggage area. Social media posts were posted to remind passengers.
ASQ #5: Retail and Food Services
- Example Insight: Yelp reviews flag overpriced or poor food options, and Incheon Airport increased dining satisfaction by tracking real-time food feedback from passengers and travellers.
- Action: Concession agreements renegotiated or vendors replaced.
ASQ #6: Staff Friendliness and Language Skills
- Example Insight: Sentiment scores from multilingual posts on social media commenting on airport staff at various passenger touchpoints.
- Action: HR launches language training programs for customer service team.
ASQ #7: Baggage Handling
- Example Insight: Increasing Twitter complaints on delayed baggage at Dubai International Airport due to influx of travellers during the international conference.
- Action: Baggage ops team investigates mechanical failure timeline after receiving more than 500 mentions and 1,500 Facebook shares
Parting Thoughts
Using social media monitoring tools as a standalone solution may not bring the best outcomes for airport operators or owners. Large airport operators may find the most value in integrating social media monitoring, traditional media monitoring and social sentiment analytics together with text mining, data processing and data cleaning capabilities.
By combining these elements, airport operators can work with airlines to measure the overall sentiment of the passenger journey – which may be useful in future policy or commercial discussions.
The complex nature of airport operations vis-à-vis various service quality performance attributes, reputation risks and corporate scorecards mean choosing the best social media companies with deep-dive aviation or airport experience to better harness the power of actionable insights.
About:
Berkshire Media brings 13 years of experience in media monitoring and managing reputation risks for airport operators through an integrated media monitoring and sentiment analytics methodology. Our team comprise of industry analysts who have worked in the aviation sector for more than 10 years coupled with data analysts who constantly process the relevant data to bring better sentiment insights from clean set of data.
As a Malaysian-based social analytics firm, we have processed more than 5 million social data including news media into actionable insights for top executives and operational managers for airports, covering more than 30 airports in Malaysia and other international airports. This include experience in quantifying the effectiveness of communication and marketing efforts beyond the traditional PR values.
Our international experience in airlines, aviation and hospitality industry have brought significant value to elevate airport customer experience, identifying root-cause of the issues from daily and real-time monitoring insights.
Additionally, our custom reputation risk model has been applied successfully as part of the corporate scorecard that can be used in managing airport service quality, in line with ASQ performance attributes set by Skytrax.
About the Author
Shahid Shayaa is the founder and managing director of Berkshire Media. He specializes in data-driven communication strategies and insights using social data analytics by combining social media monitoring tools and machine learning text algorithms for more than 13 years.
As a former aviation turnaround specialist for Malaysia Airlines and expert in media monitoring, issue management and reputation risks for companies, he is involved in various research studies in this field and published various scientific papers on social data analytics, sentiment analysis and text algorithms, covering a broad range of topics including consumer sentiment and consumer emotions for marketers and campaign managers.
His research work and studies have been cited more than 467 times, inspiring new research in the field of social analytics in Malaysia. You may view his work here.
