For airports, Christmas isn’t just the busiest travel season of the year – it’s one of the biggest opportunities to connect with passengers on an emotional level through festive campaigns. At a time when journeys are often hectic and stressful, airports can become more than just gateways to destinations — they can be part of the festive travel experience itself.
From twinkling decorations and live music to clever digital campaigns and seasonal retail offers, airports can turn Christmas into a time for creating moments of joy, reassurance, and community spirit. It’s also a golden opportunity to boost non-aeronautical revenue, with families shopping for last-minute gifts, business travellers booking Fast Track to beat the queues, and leisure travellers upgrading their journey with lounge bookings.
Most importantly, Christmas campaigns build loyalty. Passengers remember how they felt in your terminal – not just how quickly they passed through it. When airports deliver both practical support and a sprinkle of festive magic, they leave travellers with a reason to return long after the holiday season ends.
The sentiment of Christmas campaigns
Christmas campaigns aren’t just about decking the halls (or should we say terminals) or sending out a few festive-themed emails. They’re about creating memorable moments that connect with passengers on an emotional level. At the heart of this is storytelling: campaigns that capture joy, community, and connection linger in passengers’ minds long after they leave the terminal.
Data plays a crucial role here. By analysing passenger behaviour, preferences, and travel patterns, airports can combine creativity with precision targeting. This means delivering relevant offers, whether a lounge upgrade, a festive retail bundle, or a last-minute parking deal, at the right moment. Rezcomm’s cutting-edge Marketing modules make this possible, ensuring festive campaigns deliver personalisation, emotional connection and commercial impact.
Airport Christmas campaigns: Creativity in action
Across the globe, airports are getting inventive with their Christmas campaigns, blending festive spirit with practical passenger support. Let’s look at some real-world examples and the takeaways they offer for your own airport marketing.
Birmingham Airport – Bringing Joy to our Journey
Birmingham Airport’s 2024 Christmas campaign, Bringing Joy to Our Journey, blended festive spirit with meaningful community support. The initiative invited airport colleagues and partners to contribute gifts for local charities, resulting in an impressive collection of 900 donations.
Christmas trees placed around the terminal carried tags detailing ‘wishes’ from those in need — ranging from toys and toiletries to dog beds. These gifts were given to four local charities supporting diverse causes.
The festive campaign not only created a heartwarming seasonal atmosphere but also reinforced Birmingham Airport’s commitment to being a responsible neighbour, aligning with its Sustainability Strategy. It shows how Christmas campaigns can bring passengers and communities closer while building goodwill and a sense of shared purpose.
Tip for airports: Involve your local community as active stakeholders in your seasonal campaigns. By giving back in ways that matter locally, you strengthen relationships and create festive initiatives that are remembered far beyond the holiday period.
Hermes Airports – A festive journey for the whole community
Hermes Airports embraced the 2024 Christmas season with a programme designed to transform Larnaka and Pafos Airports into hubs of festive cheer. The season began with a Christmas lights event at Larnaka Airport, bringing together staff and the airport community to mark the start of the holidays.
Throughout December, passengers enjoyed live performances of beloved Christmas songs, while more than 800 local primary school children participated in interactive workshops, including a treasure hunt, crafts, games, and an interactive digital puzzle inside the terminal. These experiences brought joy to passengers while fostering a sense of connection between the airport and the wider community.
Hermes Airports also supported the Adopt a Family for Christmas initiative through the Pancyprian Volunteerism Coordinative Council, ensuring families in need received food and gifts during the festive period. This blend of celebration and giving embodied the spirit of the season while strengthening the airport’s role as more than a travel hub – as a place of shared community.
Tip for airports: Build festive campaigns that integrate experiential marketing with community involvement. By creating interactive moments that engage both passengers and local residents, you can make your airport a seasonal destination in its own right – delivering joy, connection, and lasting brand goodwill.
Bournemouth Airport – A festive celebration with the local community
Bournemouth Airport brought festive cheer to passengers in 2023 with a heartwarming Christmas concert performed by more than 60 children from a local school. The terminal was filled with seasonal carols and songs, creating a joyful atmosphere for travellers. The children also had the opportunity to meet Santa and his Elf, sample festive treats and enjoy a tour of one of the airport’s fire engines.
This event built on an ongoing partnership between Bournemouth Airport and the local school, which earlier in the year included a visit from more than 200 students to explore a specially adapted ‘flying classroom’ aircraft and learn about careers in aviation. Seasonal touches, including festive window decorations by a local artist, further enriched the passenger experience, while the airport supported the Mosaic Charity, collecting donations for bereavement support for children across Dorset.
By combining music, art, community engagement, and charitable giving, Bournemouth Airport created a festive campaign that celebrated both the season and its role as a community hub.
Tip for airports: Partner with local schools, artists, and charities to create festive campaigns that deliver a real sense of place and purpose. Community collaboration not only enriches the passenger experience but strengthens your airport’s role as a valued local stakeholder, fostering goodwill that lasts well beyond the holiday season.
Partnerships, offers and festive routes
Airports are also using festive campaigns to combine passenger experience with strategic partnerships and seasonal offers. Gatwick Airport’s 2024 programme blended practical travel advice for the busy festive period with enticing experiences, including flights to festival destinations, gifting pop-ups and seasonal retail offerings, driving both engagement and spend.
Newquay Airport collaborated with Loganair for a festive social media advert, celebrating family travel, promoting seasonal flights and connecting passengers to local events such as the Newquay Christmas market and light switch-on.
These examples show how creative collaborations with airlines, retailers, and local communities can make Christmas campaigns more memorable – boosting revenue, building loyalty, and creating a festive atmosphere passengers remember long after their journey ends.
The digital toolkit: How airports can deliver festive impact
A successful Christmas campaign blends creativity with precision – and a strong digital toolkit makes this possible. Key tactics include:
- Email marketing – Segment campaigns for frequent flyers, families and leisure travellers to deliver targeted offers, from lounge upsells to festive gift bundles.
- Social media – Share festive ads, user-generated content, video reels, and behind-the-scenes moments to spark engagement and build anticipation.
- Ecommerce offers – Use passenger data to create bundled offers such as parking and lounge access, seasonal gift vouchers, or curated retail deals to boost spend.
- Landing pages – Create bespoke festive landing pages for campaigns, offers, or competitions to drive engagement and sign‑ups. For example, a Christmas competition could encourage passengers to subscribe to marketing communications while offering prizes such as lounge access or a gift bundle.
- Marketing BI – Track real‑time campaign stats to pinpoint successful strategies. Use engagement insights to craft compelling content and benchmark performance against industry standards. Centralise all data for quick, effective decision-making.
- Omnichannel consistency – Ensure campaigns are delivered seamlessly across your airport website, app, email, social channels, and in‑terminal screens.
Rezcomm’s Marketing modules simplify creating Christmas campaigns for airports. By connecting passenger data and Marketing BI with cutting-edge campaign creation tools, Rezcomm empowers airports to deliver tailored festive experiences that maximise impact and revenue.
Deck the halls…and your Christmas marketing strategy
Christmas is the time for airports to blend creativity, community and commerce. By weaving festive spirit into every touchpoint, from heartwarming experiences in the terminal to targeted digital marketing, airports can delight passengers, build loyalty and unlock more revenue.
Now is the time to finalise your Christmas campaigns, and Rezcomm’s Marketing modules make it simple to deliver at scale. With intelligent automation, personalised landing pages, real-time insights through Marketing BI, and tools for email, social and ecommerce campaigns, Rezcomm helps airports transform seasonal spirit into measurable success.
This Christmas, make your airport a festive destination in itself – and turn the season of goodwill into a powerful launchpad for passenger engagement in the year ahead.
Transform your airport marketing campaigns with Rezcomm. Download our Marketing brochure today.
Orchestrating digital strategy, Victoria Wallace is Rezcomm’s Chief Digital Officer. With specialisations ranging from digital marketing and CRM to UX design and ecommerce, she is an expert in integrating innovation and technology to deliver outstanding results in sectors like travel, parking, and airports.
