Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, the largest in the state, moved up in a ranking of large airports, but it’s still fourth from the bottom, according to the latest J.D. Power North America Airport Satisfaction Study.
Honolulu airport’s satisfaction score this year was 593 out of a possible 1,000. Michael Taylor, managing director of travel, hospitality and retail at J.D. Power, said the Honolulu airport improved from the second-worst-ranked airport in 2023, 2022 and 2020 in the large-airport category, which includes airports with 10 million to 32.9 million passengers per year. Data was too limited in 2021 to conduct a survey.
Only Philadelphia International Airport, Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport and St. Louis Lambert International Airport were rated worse out of the 28 large airports measured in the 2024 satisfaction study, which is in its 19th year.
The study, which was fielded from August 2023 through July, attempted to measure satisfaction levels based on responses from 26,290 U.S. or Canadian residents who had traveled through at least one North American airport during the past 30 days. The travelers ranked John Wayne Airport, Orange County, as the highest among large airports, with a score of 687 out of 1,000, followed by Tampa International Airport and Kansas City International Airport.
Taylor said travelers were asked to examine their experiences across seven core dimensions (in order of importance): ease of travel through airport; level of trust with airport; terminal facilities; airport staff; departure/to airport experience; food, beverage and retail; and arrival/from airport experience.
He said the Honolulu airport scored well in people scores, “which is not surprising given the island culture.” Taylor added that the Honolulu airport ranked in the middle of airports for calmness versus hecticness. “Again that’s probably because of the islands.”
He said the Honolulu airport “scored really well in being environmentally responsible,” but said it was “significantly below average in food, beverage and retail. That would be one of the things that would really help.”
Taylor said airports with food, beverage and retail that had a “local flavor” scored better. For instance, he said passengers traveling through Atlanta liked offerings like One Flew South, a popular downtown Atlanta restaurant known for its contemporary Southern cooking with an Asian flair. He said the New Orleans airport’s ranking benefits from Leah’s Kitchen and Cafe du Monde.
“Locals in New Orleans say the gumbo at the airport Leah’s Kitchen is better than the restaurant in town,” he said.
Taylor said access to the Honolulu airport, which measures traffic and infrastructure challenges on the way to the airport, is another challenge and one that generally has great bearing on all things that happen at the airport.
If passengers aren’t getting into the building efficiently, “everything else is for naught,” he said. “I went to Honolulu once last year. Honolulu reminded me of Los Angeles.”
Taylor said improving access to the Honolulu airport, airport infrastructure and adding a greater mix of food, beverage and retail, especially local style, could help. Completing rail, which could help reduce employee traffic, also might help the Honolulu airport’s access score rise, he said.
Why does this matter? Because the airport provides visitors with the first and last impression of a destination, Taylor said.
Local real estate analyst Stephany Sofos said the Honolulu airport experience mars Hawaii’s image of a world-class destination and needs some serious upgrading to support tourism officials in their quest to attract higher-spending visitors.
“I’ve had to pick people up and take them to the airport in the last 45 days, and I’ve flown interisland, too,” she said. “It’s embarrassing. The signage is poor. You can smell urine in the parking lot and elevators. There is not enough of a mix of good food, beverage and retail options.”
Sofos questioned why after decades worth of airport modernization projects, the airport system still has so far to go.
“You cannot have expectations of getting higher-quality visitors if you cannot bring a quality product,” she said. “The Hawai‘i Tourism Authority can spend tens of millions to market Hawaii, but I think we’d see greater benefit if we improved our visitor infrastructure, and that includes the airport.”
Some of the key findings of the 2024 J.D. Power study show that the airport experience matters. To be sure, according to the study, North American airports overall successfully navigated record passenger volumes, with 60% of North American passengers saying they enjoyed spending time in the airport and another 59% saying the airport helped alleviate the stress of travel.
However, crowding had a significant impact on satisfaction, with terminals perceived as “less crowded” scoring higher than those perceived to be “severely crowded.”
The J.D. Power study found that rising airport costs finally may be reaching a breaking point, with passengers in large airports spending $6.31 per person less than they did in 2023 on food, beverage and other items.
Taylor said the top-performing airports have new facilities that can accommodate increased passenger volume and are perceived as cleaner and less worn. They also offered customers localized food and beverage choices and easy access.
State Transportation Director Ed Sniffen, who spoke Oct. 2 during a Hawai‘i Tourism Authority Conference transportation panel, said it was “big news” when it came out that HNL, Hawaii’s flagship airport, was second to last for satisfaction for large airports.
“It kind of cuts when Hawaii comes up in something like that,” Sniffen said. “We knew from Hawaii’s perspective that we cannot rebuild the airport tomorrow. It cost us $270 million for the Mauka concourse, a beautiful facility. Next up is going to be Diamond Head concourse for $2 billion, and that’s not going to be overnight. (It will) probably (be) about 2035.”
Sniffen said HIDOT knew it had to do something sooner to come up in the rankings, and the “cool thing is that we did.”
He said first they put $500 million into addressing cracked runaways, which were a safety issue. They also prioritized cleaning after a sister-city visit to Honolulu by the chairman of Haneda Airport in Japan, who said his first impression of the airport was that it was “dirty.”
“We cannot be the biggest and brightest airport tomorrow, but we can be the cleanest today,” he said. “You’ll see a lot more differences.”
Sniffen said he used to walk around the airport looking for problem areas where he could write his name in the dust and take pictures of it. He said he now has a hard time finding problem areas because the workers “are taking a lot of pride.”
He added that since prioritizing cleanliness with workers in October, the Honolulu airport already has moved up two rankings.
Sniffen said HIDOT is focused on making sure passengers get through the Transportation Security Administration lines within a 19-minute standard, and on improving the places that people want to be at the airport.
“I don’t want you to sit in your seat the whole time. I want you to spend a whole bunch of money at the airport,” he said. “We are making sure that they adjust the concessions. We want to ensure that we have a local feel to the concessions, so we have commitments from Alan Wong, Aloha Plate, Lei Stand, ensuring that we can bring more local vendors.”
He said the goal is for visitors to experience Hawaii and for local travelers to find something that they “absolutely enjoy.”
Sniffen said he’s also trying to recruit Zippy’s and Liliha Bakery.
Taylor said such improvements matter as “we find there is a really high correlation between how much money people spend in the airport and how well they rate the airport.”
Since Honolulu airport improvements are funded through airport revenues, progress matters. However, Taylor said barring the building of a new facility like Kansas City International Airport, it often takes years for an airport to see significant movement in the rankings.
“Kansas City was in the middle of the rankings last year when the new airport opened,” he said. “They went from third from the bottom in 2022 to third from the top this year. LaGuardia Airport was dead last for two decades or so, and now they are doing very well. They are above average.”
However, Taylor acknowledged that the Honolulu airport has been trending up since the start of the year.
