That was the message of Jan Richards, head of insight and planning at Dublin airport, who said it could be “very challenging and daunting” to meet the rising expectations of passengers, especially when the airport had been expanding rapidly.

“Customer experience is an ever growing and improving thing,” said Richards during a presentation at Abta’s Customer Insight in the Travel Industry conference.

“The rising expectations of consumers has been one of the biggest differences in recent years, and those expectations keep increasing quickly, which means you have to keep improving.”

Richards said she had been working on a pilot project to improve the transfer experience for passengers through Dublin airport, which included liaising closely with Aer Lingus’s management – the airline provides the majority of Dublin’s 1.7 million annual connecting passengers.

One of the major “drivers” identified during this project was to improve the comfort of the seats at the airport’s departure gates.

“It’s about having that human touch, and you see that message time and again – you have to relate to people on a human level,” said Richards. “You have to put customers at the heart of everything you do to achieve customer satisfaction and loyalty.”

Richards also said there was a “rising trust issue” among consumers, partly fuelled by the publicity given to so-called “fake news” in the media.

“You have to be telling the truth,” she said. “The best way to manage PR is to tell the truth and don’t try to cover it up.”