Travellers Vote Dubai International As Middle East’s Best Airport

Dubai International has been voted as the Middle East’s best airport by readers of Business Traveller, the internationally acclaimed travel magazine, in a survey for 2009. The readers also voted Dubai International as the Best Airport in the Middle East for Duty Free Shopping.

The award in the best airport category is given based on excellence in delivery of customer service, particularly in areas such as baggage delivery, check-in, and frontline services. Airport facilities and duty-free shopping are some of the major factors that play a role in the voting for the awards. Survey forms are included in Business Traveller magazine and sent to all regional subscribers, a large percentage of which turns them in with their choice.

In the world’s best airport category, Dubai International finished second only to Singapore’s Changi Airport, the winner this year.

This is the fourth consecutive year that Dubai International has won the region’s best airport award. Dubai International has won over 14 regional and international awards between 2008 and 2009 – nearly triple the number of awards in the preceding year, and the highest in a year to date.

"At Dubai Airports, we aspire to be the world’s best airport in every sense, but most of all in the quality of our customer service. While all awards and recognitions evoke a sense of pride at Dubai Airports, the Business Traveller Award is truly special because it is the travellers – our customers, who choose the winner. Winning this award tells us that our efforts at continually enhancing our customer service are making a difference, and that we are headed in the right direction," said, Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports.

The annual awards ceremony was held at the Godolphin Ballroom, Emirates Towers on May 4, on the eve of the Arabian Travel Market 2009. Griffiths received the award on behalf of Dubai Airports from the guest of honour Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Head of easyGroup – best known for creating the low cost airline easyJet in 1995.

Dubai Properties Group Celebrates Success Of DHDA And Dubai Quality Awards

Dubai Properties Group (DPG), a member of Dubai Holding, today hosted a gala event honouring employees for contributing to the organisation’s performance excellence that has received industry wide recognitions from the Dubai Economic Department-led Dubai Quality Award and Dubai Human Development Award (DHDA).

The celebration took place at the Business Bay Sales Centre in the presence of top DPG management, including Hashim Al Dabal, Executive Chairman of Dubai Properties Group.

Mohamed Binbrek, Group CEO of DPG said: “As an innovative provider of end-to-end solutions in the real estate sector, Dubai Properties Group aims to create value and achieve performance excellence through the implementation of strong organizational policies and global best practises. Winning the coveted industry recognitions has given us the impetus to raise the corporate benchmarks that we have set for ourselves.”
In addition to acknowledging the group’s recent win at the Dubai Quality Awards, which took place on 22 April at the Grand Hyatt in Dubai, Hashim Al Dabal also honoured the group’s Employees with Best Employee Award for 2008, as part of the company’s employee reward programme Ijada.

Fareda Abdullah, Executive Director of Human Capital at Dubai Properties Group, said: “We recognize our employees as our greatest assets. The Ijada programme has been designed to recognize employees who have excelled in their contribution to the group’s success. Employees are mandated to exhibit strong professional ethics, exceed expectations and promote a positive workplace culture. We are confident all those who have been recognised today will inspire others to deliver their best.”

Dubai Properties’ Group’s Ijada initiative aims to reward and benchmark employees against the organisation’s six guiding principles of excellence, innovation, commitment, integrity, hard work and speed.