Eureka! Institutional Repository

In today's era, with great technological advances and innovations as well as higher educational level, the quality of services offered and the excellence of customer service are the key to maximizing profitability, achieving competitive advantage and customer satisfaction. The aviation industry could not be an exception. However, quality is characterized by subjectivity, as its perception is influenced by factors such as ethnicity, standard of living and education level and varies from person to person based on the background. Having understood the relationship between quality and satisfaction, organizations try to identify their customers' needs, expectations and ways of correspond in order to retain customers and attract new ones. For airports, customers are not the only passengers, but also airlines, and all other stakeholders involved in trading within airport facilities. The purpose of the present study is to measure the satisfaction of passengers based on quality ground handling of the Macedonia Airport of Thessaloniki. The research is divided into two parts. Part A is a bibliographic review aimed at presenting the theoretical background on which Part B is based, namely quantitative research and consequently its results. The first part is divided into 5 chapters where the research objectives are presented, the concepts and correlations of tourism, air transport, total quality, quality of service, airport operations and factors contributing to quality terrestrial services such as human resources, check-in and security screening, airport environment, transportation, basic facilities, convinience and prices. The second part consists of 3 chapters, which outline the research methodology, its results, case control, conclusions as well as research limitations and suggestions for future research. The survey involved 300 departing passengers and the average overall satisfaction reached a neutral satisfactory level of 3.21 with prospects of improvement after completion of the works of the concessionaire Fraport Greece.