The competition between the two airports is similar to that experienced in other major cities such as New York or London. The traveler’s preference is crucial when buying the ticket, of course people will choose the closest airport, also the departure time, price and destination will be important. It is a mistake to think that the purchase of the ticket is only determined by the location of the airport.
Years ago I worked for the airline industry creating digital strategies to attract travelers and we quickly learned that preference is multifactorial. For this reason, it is essential to see the traffic patterns to the AIFA site to understand if there is a real preference or government-driven support.
According to figures obtained from Google searches, the official AICM site manages to attract 72 percent of its organic traffic from 5,671 keywords. This number represents 9.2 percent of the total words that generate traffic for the AICM site. The most important is “Airport” which represents 42 percent of the total traffic. This shows that in the mind of the national consumer and traveler the AICM is “the airport”, in the American Union the most important word is “Mexico City Airport” which represents 6 percent of total traffic. In other words, the concept of the airport in Mexico City generates almost 50 percent of the traffic. This is to be expected from a facility with 91 years of operation, the national and international traveler simply has no memory of the AIFA brand. If we review the origin of the AIFA traffic, it will be verified that only 1 percent of the traffic comes from the term “Airport”.
The AIFA anchored its content around the “Felipe Ángeles” concept. 62 percent of the traffic comes from the term “Felipe Angeles Airport”. From a branding perspective, this is wonderful, but the problem is that it does not represent a geographical location, which is crucial in choosing airports and buying tickets. For example, the main airport in France is Charles de Gaulle Airport, by far the best known brand, but the website cleverly groups both Orly and Carles de Gaulle under one website. https://www.parisaeroport.fr/en under a Paris Aeroport brand. This strategy is very useful as it presents the two brands together for the consumer to choose from, both Orly and De Gaulle.
The problem with AIFA’s digital marketing is that it competes with the Federal Government’s communication strategy about the construction process. AIFA volaraifa.mx’s main competitor is the airportaifa.mx construction site. The construction communication campaign has 3,357 terms placed in Google, the site owns the first position in Google for the term “AIFA” and “Felipe Angeles International Airport AIFA”.
More interesting is finding that the construction site has 10 times more terms posted than the airport site. The best strategy the government could have taken was to turn the site of airportaifa.mx in the main airport. The lack of a digital strategy at the two airports has meant that neither has an advantageous position vis-à-vis the traveller.
Interestingly, on Facebook, the AIFA has 143,000 followers, while the AICM only has 44,000. This demonstrates the social media muscle of the Presidency but also demonstrates that the focus has not been on positioning AIFA’s digital property.
The AIFA has become a political issue, but the little use of the facilities is something more complicated than the lack of flights, distance or number of runways. The Airport simply has not been endowed with a marketing strategy that communicates its benefits to travelers not only in Mexico but abroad. There is good news, in the few months of operation the trend of keywords that lead to the AIFA site is on the rise, the challenge is that they are the ones that communicate their value proposition. What the AIFA needs is the famous Anglo-Saxon term Reason to Believe.