Jim Eagles: Let's show them how it's done

It never ceases to amaze me how many countries fail to recognise that their airports are the shop windows of their tourist industries.

When you arrive somewhere like Britain's Heathrow Airport, and have to queue for hours in a hot, smelly area where the air-conditioning appears to have broken down, the welcoming face of the country is a surly immigration officer, and to get anywhere you have to cart your luggage for miles along narrow corridors and up endless stairs, is it any wonder if you resolve not to go there again if you can possibly avoid it?

By contrast, if the place you arrive is like Singapore's Changi Airport, where everything is clean and cool, immigration and customs processing is smoothly efficient and the transport connections conveniently placed, you can't help but feel welcome and happy to return.

Incredibly, many of the countries with the most unwelcoming faces are those most desperate to boost their tourist industries. Don't they realise that one of the best ways to attract tourists is to make the country easy and pleasant to visit?

It's all very well for, say, Laos to put up signs welcoming tourists and to head the notices on the immigration counter: "Dear Guests." But why do they then require guests to queue in long lines in the steaming heat, first at one desk to apply for a visa, then at another desk to receive it, then at a passport desk to actually get into the country, and finally at the customs desk. And they demand US$30 ($43) for the privilege - with a surcharge if you should be foolish enough to arrive on weekends or public holidays.

Small wonder that a lot more people opt for friendly, efficient, visa-free Thailand.

This is a good time to consider the topic of the welcome mats that countries provide for tourists because the Airports Council International - representing 1540 airports in 175 countries - will be in Auckland next month for the annual conference and exhibition.

Fortunately, we can be reasonably confident they'll be impressed at what they find here. I think our airport rates as one of the best and Travel readers seem to agree.

Troy Gallagher, who worked at Auckland International Airport there from 1990 to 2000 and "watched while the old ugly duckling was transformed into a swan" describes it as "spacious and inviting".

And Michele Ormrod, who's just spent nine weeks touring much of Europe, says, "Auckland International Airport is still the best airport I have visited."

But what about the airports operated by these delegates from around the world? How welcoming are they?

When I invited comments on overseas airports a few weeks ago, few readers had a good word to say for American airports.

Warren Garner and his wife, who have just returned from six weeks in North America, say Los Angeles is still by far the worst. "It took us 3.5 hours from the time we arrived in the baggage area to the time we checked in to fly on to Canada. We were checked at least 10 times and felt we were criminals the way we were treated. Avoid like the plague in future."

The best airport the Garners experienced was just up the coast at San Francisco. "No waiting, through in less than five minutes, highly recommend."

The Garners also rated Vancouver "pretty good" with a quick check-in and, as a bonus, "food at street prices, not inflated like most airports".

European airports also received mixed reviews.

Ormrod is one of many to dismiss Heathrow as "rundown, claustrophobic and poorly signed".

But she reckons Lisbon Airport is worse. At the toilets, for instance, patrons were requested to place used toilet paper in the bin provided - which would be reasonably acceptable if the airport had an effective cleaning roster.

"It doesn't take too much imagination to build up a picture of the sight - and smell - of a toilet with a bin of used toilet paper full and overflowing on to the floor," says. "Even the men refused to use the toilets and hung on until we boarded the plane."

Ken Klitscher says a welcome exception to Europe's second-rate airports is Amsterdam's Schiphol: "I arrived there in cold and misty rain, and immediately felt better because people walked around with smiles on their faces, and when I asked a question they actually seemed to want to help."

When he asked about transport to his hotel, he was told the likely price of a taxi and advised it would be much cheaper to take a train into the city and a taxi from there.

He was told: "You buy your train ticket right over there, sir. See? Over in the corner. Then you go down that escalator there to the platform, and the next train leaves in 11 minutes."

The staff were similarly helpful when - "through no fault of my own" - he arrived late for his flight out. The woman at the check-in counter slammed a label on his suitcase, summoned a porter, and said, "Run." He made it.

Klitscher wasn't at all impressed by Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta Airport with its flaking paint, bare concrete walls, cracked and lifting tiles, and rusty and leaking restroom taps. Added to that was an unwelcoming immigration official.

"Where is your entry visa?" he demanded of Klitscher.

"I don't have one. I was told I could get one here."

An accusatory glare, then an abrupt: "Passport."

"I handed it over and a long pause followed while he studied it. '$50'

"I thrust $50 through the grille.

" 'Stand there,' he ordered, motioning a little to my left. I shuffled hesitantly across, but I must have gone too far. 'No. Not there. There,' he barked, jabbing a finger at a point two inches to my right. Thoroughly cowed, I leaped to the new position. He glared at me for some moments, and then lost interest. 'Entry visa,' he demanded of the next person in line.

"This posed a problem. Here I was, stuck in no-man's-land, staring at a blank partition, shorn of passport and $50, and wondering what I was meant to do.

"But Minion No 2 came to the rescue and slipped my passport and a pink slip of paper (the visa) through a crack in the partition."

That's hardly the sort of welcome to help Kenya revive its flagging tourist industry. But it's an all-too-common experience throughout the world.

Let's hope the airport bosses flying here for their conference are impressed by the usual warm Kiwi greeting - I love the way our immigration officials say, as they return my passport, "Welcome home, Mr Eagles" - and the excellent airport facilities.

Then maybe when they return home they might do something about giving us a better welcome when we visit their countries.