Luxembourg airport: Europe has never been more connected

Regular daytime travellers at the Luxembourg airport (lux-Airport) are familiar with the perfectly synchronized ballet of planes taking off for Europe’s business hubs and finest travel destinations. The airport is playing a key role in Luxembourg’s economic growth, and is enjoying a strong growth across all its activity segments. We spoke to René Steinhaus, Commercial Director at lux-Airport, to learn more about the airport’s success and how it connects travellers to Europe and beyond.
 
Luxembourg airport has become attractive to an ever-growing number of passengers. A record number of three million travellers passed through the airport in 2016, an increase of 12.4% compared to 2015. In just three years, it has gained one million passengers, showing one of the strongest growth rates in number of travellers in Europe.
For René Steinhaus, this success stems from the arrival of low cost airlines adding new destinations to the list of places to fly to, the fast growth of legacy carriers and the rise in traffic of leisure tour operator LuxairTours.
“We are growing in all segments. Our home base carrier Luxair and network carriers like Lufthansa or KLM are growing as well as the leisure tour operator traffic with LuxairTours. The low cost airlines discovered our airport just a few years ago and increased their traffic share to 11% in 2016”, he says.
Five new companies, Hop!, Air France, LOT Polish Airlines, Aegean Airlines, Flybe and Ryanair, have been added to the existing airlines that serve the airport. Europe has never been more connected.
“The traffic growth of lux-Airport is driven by the economic growth of Luxembourg and the Greater Region. The airport is an economic driver itself because every new route supports the success of our region”, explains Steinhaus, who was responsible for strategic and commercial projects within airports, airlines and even cruise liners around the world before joining lux-Airport in September 2016.
 
International reach
Unlike most airports of European capitals, lux-Airport offers international reach with the convenience of an uncongested airport located a few minutes away from the city centre, a key asset greatly appreciated by business travellers with time constraints.
Major business hubs and Europe’s best travel destinations benefit from multiple daily direct flights. London, Frankfurt, Paris and Zurich can be reached in less than an hour while cities such as Stockholm, Dublin, Porto or Warsaw are just a few hours away.
In addition to the 75 destinations served directly from Luxembourg, the airport is connected to the entire world via seven major international hubs: London-Heathrow, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Munich, Paris Charles-de-Gaulle, Zurich and Istanbul, making Luxembourg the best-connected airport per capital in Europe.
 
A prime customer service
Luxembourg airport is ranked in the top 10 airports handling fewer than five million passengers per year in the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2017. A ranking in which air passengers judge airports according to 40 different performance criteria.
Everything has been designed to make the passengers’ journey as smooth as possible as soon as they enter the airport allowing travellers to enjoy a smooth check-in, even at peak times.
“Contrary to other regional airports, we are providing the quality and services of large hub airports – this combined with the short ways and relaxed atmosphere of a regional airport. We are offering tailor-made products for business travellers as well as for cost sensitive passengers, e.g. our economy parking and the low cost long-range buses connecting us to the Greater Region. We call this concept our boutique airport”, says Steinhaus.
With nearly half of its passengers being frequent business travellers, lux-Airport is putting a lot of work into adapting its portfolio of services to meet today’s needs, from state-of-the-art infrastructures to tailor-made services.
“We are offering business passengers the services they are used to from larger airports such as our airline lounge. Our Wi-Fi is unlimited and free of charge. We firmly believe that easy, fast and completely free and unlimited internet access is a fundamental service every high quality airport should deliver to its passengers”, argues Steinhaus.
To serve the needs of an ever-growing number of mobile business passengers, lux-Airport opened a state-of-the-art and fully equipped Regus Express Centre in the terminal, enabling professionals to meet clients and partners in meeting rooms or to prepare a meeting while waiting for a flight. The space consists of five meeting rooms with capacity for up to 50 peoples, private offices to rent and a co-working space, with state-of-the-art equipment.
“Everything has been designed to meet the needs of mobile and demanding business travellers looking for a quality work environment”, says Steinhaus.
 
Feeling at home
A series of major construction works will complete the relifting of the airport to provide the best level of comfort for its passengers.
A total of 13 new commercial outlets have been added, making it possible to indulge in fine dining at Oberweis, enjoy a Frapuccino at Starbucks, or wander in stylish shops all under one roof. In all, space devoted to catering and shopping has increased by 20% from the previous configuration, and will eventually exceed 2,000 m².
Steinhaus continues: “Our short distance from the Indoor Parking to the aircraft is an advantage you will not find in larger airports. Our airport seamlessly combines the destination choices of a large international airport with the tranquillity of a small regional one”.
In addition, a new Terminal reserved for flights in the Schengen area as well as regional aircraft, e.g. from Luxair, Lufthansa or KLM, will open in the summer to provide the highest service level to passengers.
“Terminal B will increase the capacity of the airport by about one million passengers. In addition, it will strongly reduce the number of bus transfers as many aircrafts will be parked at the terminal and will provide the possibility to offer priority boarding”, adds Steinhaus.
 
Logistics hub
Lux-Airport not only connects travellers to Europe and beyond but also acts as a major logistics hub, offering airfreight connections worldwide.
“With 821.000 tons of cargo in 2016, Luxembourg is the 6th largest cargo airport in Europe. We see the cooperation with all logistic players in the Luxembourg cluster, developing the advantages of Luxembourg as a multimodal hub, as the key to our future success”, says Steinhaus.
While Cargolux remains by far Luxembourg’s Airport’s largest customer, with a 82% market share, other leading international airlines are taking a more important role such as Qatar Airways and Atlas followed by China Airlines and Silk Way West Airlines.
 
Busy Future
In the future, the airport will play an even more important role in Luxembourg’s economy. “The airport will grow in harmony with the economic growth of Luxembourg and the Greater Region. It will be an important engine for this growth. New aircraft types will open the possibility of new longer direct routes avoiding transfers, for example to the US east coast”.
Throughout the passenger journey, digital technology will be key to improve customer experience and make airport processes more efficient.
“In the short-term, we will implement a pre-booking possibility for our car park, mobile terminal maps and real-time schedule information for public transport. Digitalization is the trend at airports and offers a lot of possibilities, but we will only implement solutions where we see a real advantage for our passengers”, concludes Steinhaus.
 
Communiqué par Luxembourg for Finance