Airport Experience® News - Food & Beverage Issue 2023

BEFORE YOU TAKE OFF

SOCIAL CONNECTIONS PDX Engages Community In Nominating Businesses For New Airport Locations

BY C AROL WARD

media promotion and a big social media campaign that we undertook for this project,” says Carey. The social media campaign ran on Instagram and Facebook. “The food and beverage community and the retail community in Portland is very close knit,” she says. “Word of mouth travels fast and we wanted to create buzz.” PDX put the onus on its followers to help guide the properties team to the best restaurants and retail in the city. “We basically asked the community to tag businesses they wanted to see at the airport,” says Carey. “It was an alert to that business that the community is calling for you at PDX. You should talk to us about opportunity. We direct messaged those that were tagged and invited them to come out for a one-on-one meeting,” she adds. “We talked through all their questions, talked through the RFP process.”

Even if her team didn’t initially see the nominated business as a good fit for the airport, Carey says they made the initial outreach. “We just wanted everybody to have a chance to hear about it,” she says. “They could hear us out then propose if they wanted. Then we would decide whether they were a good fit.” The airport incentivized participation from the public, holding a contest with a $500 prize package made up of gift cards to some of the city’s leading restaurants. A handful of businesses nominated by the public went on to submit bids, Carey says. Several more took part in meetings but ultimately decided not to bid this time around. “They’ve stayed engaged with us in other ways,” Carey notes. “Sometimes these relationships take years to build before a contract comes into place. I see this as a foot in the door for a future RFPs with the relationships that we’ve been able to establish.”

ortland International Airport (PDX) is somewhat unusual in its concessions approach. Instead

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of relying on a developer or a prime concessionaire, PDX offers direct leases for each of its concessions spaces. When it comes to bringing in new tenants, the airport’s properties team has a heavy lift in terms of creating awareness and conducting outreach. With PDX’s $2 billion expansion underway, the airport properties team planned to recruit about two dozen new partners. Abby Carey, concessions development manager, restaurants and retail, says her department has always had an active outreach program, but it added a new component when seeking new tenants to occupy the expanding terminal. In addition to a robust marketing program and “hundreds” of one-on-one meetings, which is the typical strategy, “we upped our game in the area of

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