Cleveland Hopkins Airport Reports Another Increase in Customer Service Scores

CLEVELAND — Cleveland Hopkins International Airport earned its highest customer service scores to date in a survey of travelers conducted by Airports Council International, an industry trade group.

Cleveland Hopkins finished the year with a score of 4.33 out of 5, up from 4.18 in 2018. Travelers were asked to assess the airport in a number of areas, including cleanliness, restaurants and shopping, ease of finding their way, internet access and more.

The results from the ACI survey are in contrast with a recent J.D. Power survey, which named Cleveland Hopkins among the worst airports of its size in North America.

The J.D. Power survey is conducted online; the ACI questionnaire is completed in-person by 350 randomly selected passengers at boarding gates of pre-selected flights each quarter. More than 380 airports in 90 countries participate.

Cleveland Hopkins earned its highest-ever fourth-quarter scores in the following categories: overall satisfaction, business travelers; overall satisfaction, leisure travelers; courtesy and helpfulness of airport staff; cleanliness of washrooms; cleanliness of terminal. The airport also scored higher in those same categories than airports globally of the same size (5-15 million passengers).

“It is important as the airport continues to grow that we also continue to provide the best possible experience for our guests. I am proud of our staff and our airport partners for their continued dedication to enhancing the customer experience,” said airport Director Robert Kennedy.

In the J.D. Power Airport Satisfaction Study, airports are scored on a 1,000-point scale; Cleveland scored a 755, second from the bottom in the medium-size airport category, with 5.5 million to 9.9 million passengers. Only Kahului Airport in Hawaii scored worse.

Cleveland Hopkins will likely improve its ranking with J.D. Power this year, simply because the airport will move into the “large” airport category, for facilities with 10 million to 32.9 million passengers. Hopkins announced earlier this month that it welcomed 10.04 million travelers in 2019, a 4% increase over the year before, and the most in more than a decade.

In general, the larger the airport, the worse the scores. Large airports in the J.D. Power survey include New York LaGuardia, Chicago Midway and Philadelphia, among others.

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