Brussels Airport was announced as the overall winner of the third heat of this year's Routes Airport Marketing Awards last night at a spectacular networking evening at the Song Festival Grounds in Tallinn. Almost 900 aviation professionals, and the President of Estonia, were gathered to witness the presentation of the awards and to take part in the largest Routes Europe event to date.

The Routes Airport Marketing Awards have become synonymous with recognising and rewarding the highest standards of marketing activities undertaken by airports. The awards work on the core principle that the people who are best placed to judge an airport's marketing activities are the airlines. Airlines from the European region have spent the last few months voting for the airports they felt deserved to win and their votes were based on an airport's marketing activities over the past year.

The overall winner, Brussels Airport, demonstrated a clear route development strategy and implementation process in their awards submission and illustrated clearly how they have worked with their airline customers. Winning this regional heat now enables them to be automatically shortlisted for the World Routes Awards due to be held in Abu Dhabi later this year.

David Stroud, Executive Vice President Airports, Routes said: "We are delighted that Brussels has won this regional heat of our awards and will now compete in the World Routes Airport Marketing Awards later this year."

Speaking just after receiving the award, Leon Verhallen, Director of Aviation Marketing said: "We were thrilled to be firstly nominated by our clients again -- as that is the most important step -- but it is wonderful to be selected as the overall winner for the European region. We put together a very thorough submission that showed the important relationship between the airport and its airline partners and a special animation helped to support this. Crucially, we did this with one of the most enthusiastic and best teams in the world."

The Routes Airport Marketing Awards were split into 3 sub-regional categories; Northern Europe, Mediterranean & Southern Europe and Central & Eastern Europe, with a new category being introduced this year for airports of under 4 million passengers. Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen was crowned winner of the Mediterranean and Southern Europe category, Prague Airport triumphed in the Central & Eastern category and Bremen topped the under 4 million pax category.

A complete list of the nominated airports in each category can be found below:

Northern Europe

Brussels Airport - WINNER

Amsterdam Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED

Hamburg Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED

Zurich Airport

Central & Eastern Europe

Prague Airport - WINNER

Warsaw Chopin Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED

Budapest Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED

Mediterranean & Southern Europe

Istanbul Sabiha G?k?en International Airport - WINNER

Antalya Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED

Athens International Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED

Malaga Airport

Under 4 million

City Bremen Airport - WINNER

Friedrichshafen Airport - HIGHLY COMMENDED

Ajaccio Airport

Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport

Overall Winner - Brussels Airport

Contributed by UBM Aviation