Specialist Airport Commercial Training Course Opens for Registration

The bi-annual CPI Airport Commercial Development and Management Course for airport managers will be held once again in Sydney, Australia from July 22-25, 2019, with registrations now open. The popular professional development course, run by leading global airport commercial consultancy Concession Planning International, attracts management from airports across the world who wish to gain a deeper insight into the airport commercial discipline. The course has been attended by well over 500 airport professionals since its launch.

The course specifically addresses the challenges faced by today’s airport managers, centred around balancing the goal of optimising commercial income with the increasing emphasis on delivering a distinctive passenger experience.

Whatever the strategic setting of an airport’s operator, non-aviation revenue generation is one of the key pillars of every good airport business model. While no two airports are the same, many of the basic principles of a good commercial programme are very similar. The Airport Commercial Development and Management Course’s attendees spend 4 days in a classroom environment, learning the fundamentals of the airport commercial business. They also undertake a group exercise which encourages them to apply their learning as the week progresses.

The directors of CPI, Susan Gray and Jeremy Corfield, both have decades of specialist airport commercial experience, working as operators in the industry as well as global airport commercial strategy and planning consultants. They are joined in Sydney by invited subject matter experts from within the industry including Craig Dunstan, who has responsibility for customer experience at Christchurch Airport; John Rankin, Managing Director of Skyfii, a data services company specialising in converting wifi, location and transactional data into valuable insights and marketing tools; Ian Cesa, speaking on how to use research and insights to inform commercial strategy; and Mark Bunting, an expert in car parking revenue management.

Course Director Susan Gray says: “We focus not simply on the core principles of airport commercial planning and management but also recognise and discuss the impact of new and unique factors facing airports today and in the future. These common themes are addressed throughout every presentation over the 4 days of the course”.
Recent past attendees hail from organisations such as Fraport, Hamburg, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, London Heathrow, London Stansted, Oman, Sydney, Singapore Changi, Auckland, Wellington, Townsville, Mackay, Darwin, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Kuala Lumpur, Marseille, Riga, Vilnius and more.