At Routes World 2024 in Bahrain, 530 airports came to meet 230 airlines. Over three days, delegates held more than 9,000 meetings (Bahrain International Airport via Routes, October 2024). Do the arithmetic and the first rule of route development forums appears. There are more than two airports for every airline, and all of them want the same thing: a slot in the airline’s diary.
That makes these forums different from most trade events. The airline’s network planner does not come to shop. She comes to filter, in 20-minute meetings, which of dozens of proposals deserve a second look back at headquarters. Airports that treat the meeting as a sales pitch rarely get past that filter. Airports that arrive together with their destination, with demand data, an incentive offer and a marketing budget already agreed, get the follow-up call.
This guide is for airport marketing teams, destination marketing organisations (DMOs) and the organisers of regional aviation forums. It explains how the meeting systems work, why tourism boards sit at the table, how to prepare 20 minutes and what to get right if you host a forum yourself.
What is a route development forum?
Route development, also called air service development, is the work airports and regions do to attract new airline services. A route development forum is the event where that work turns into meetings. Airports, destinations and airlines register, request one-to-one appointments in advance and meet in fixed time slots. Talks, awards and receptions fill the rest of the programme, but the diary is the reason people travel.
Two formats dominate:
- Global and regional marketplaces such as Routes World (formerly World Routes) and its regional editions, for example Routes Europe and Routes Asia, where airports, tourism bodies and airlines from many countries meet.
- Association conferences such as the JumpStart Air Service Development Conference of Airports Council International North America (ACI-NA), which combines an education day with two days of airport and airline meetings.
Three parties sit at the tables. Airlines send network and route planners. Airports send their aviation marketing or air service development teams. Destinations send tourism boards, ministries and other destination marketing organisations, whose job is to bring visitors and who hold the marketing budgets an airline cares about. Consultants and suppliers attend too, usually with limited meeting rights.
Why do regions spend this effort? Connectivity pays. In 2024, SEO Amsterdam Economics studied this for the airport association ACI EUROPE. A 10 per cent increase in direct air connectivity goes along with 0.5 per cent more GDP per capita and 1.6 per cent more jobs. It is an industry-commissioned study, but the direction matches what tourism boards see in their own numbers. A new route brings visitors in both directions, including the business visitors and congress delegates who spend most per day, as our explainer on what business tourism is shows.
Why airline time is the scarce resource
If a new route is worth that much to a region, every airport at the forum wants it. The airlines know this, and the meeting systems are built around their diaries.
Routes World 2024, Bahrain
More airports than airlines in the room
Look at the access dates for Routes World 2025 in Hong Kong. Airlines on hosted networking stands could use the meeting system from 30 June. Airport and tourism meeting delegates got access on 21 July, three weeks later (routesonline.com, 2025). Airlines block their unavailable times first, and airports then request what is left. Requests go to an individual delegate, not to a company, and the recipient can accept, reschedule, decline or ask a question in the chat.
JumpStart makes the scarcity even more explicit. Each airport may request a private 20-minute meeting with up to 12 airlines, ranked on a wish list. Airlines submit their own wish lists, and ACI-NA builds the schedules with a matching program and staff. The higher an airline sits on your list, the better your chance of a meeting. ACI-NA guarantees no minimum and steps in only when an airport ends up with three meetings or fewer (ACI-NA, 2024).
In 2023, route planners from 19 airlines held more than 900 meetings at JumpStart. That is roughly 47 meetings per airline team over the meeting days (our calculation). The planner hears the same pitch dozens of times.
Why destinations sit at the table
Scarce time raises the bar for every pitch, and the strongest answer often comes from outside the airport. An airline’s main risk on a new route is demand, especially in the first seasons when nobody yet knows the flight exists. An airport can lower costs, but it cannot fill seats in a foreign source market. The destination can, and that is why tourism boards book meetings of their own. At Routes World 2025, Tourism Australia’s representative held 20 meetings over three days (The Standard, Hong Kong, September 2025).
The rules on airport incentives push in the same direction. In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lets airports waive or reduce their own fees on new routes. For year-round nonstop service to an unserved destination, such incentives may run for up to two years, for seasonal service for up to three. Airports may also fund marketing, paid to the marketing provider or against invoices. They may not use airport revenue for cash payments or revenue guarantees (FAA policy statement, December 2023). In the EU, the 2014 guidelines allow start-up aid of up to 50 per cent of airport and ground handling charges over three years. A draft published by the European Commission in May 2026 would abolish that aid, with new rules planned for April 2027 (CMS, May 2026). Fee discounts are capped. In the US, marketing money from the destination is not bound by the airport revenue rules. In the EU, publicly funded marketing agreements with airlines can count as state aid as well, so they need their own legal check.
In practice, the destination’s offer often comes as a fund or a partnership:
- In Iceland, the Route Development Fund has a separate Marketing Support Division, and the regional tourism bodies Visit North Iceland and Visit East Iceland sit in its working group (Icelandic Tourist Board, 2026).
- In Western Australia, Tourism WA and Perth Airport pooled 30 million Australian dollars in 2018 for destination marketing agreements with individual airlines (Government of Western Australia, 2018).
- In Canberra, VisitCanberra ran targeted campaigns in October and November 2025 in the source regions of two new regional routes (VisitCanberra, September 2025).
The division of labour is easy to sum up:
| Party | Brings to the meeting | Wants from the meeting |
|---|---|---|
| Airline | Aircraft, network fit, the decision | Proof of demand and lower launch risk |
| Airport | Traffic data, catchment analysis, fee incentives | A new service and passenger growth |
| Destination | Marketing funds, trade contacts in the source market, an events calendar | Visitors, nights and spend |
The network planner sees the same three columns. If airport and destination present them as one plan, the meeting answers her question.
How the meeting system works
A joint case only helps if it reaches the right diary, and that runs through the meeting system. The details differ by event, but the sequence is stable.
Route development forum
From registration to follow-up
- Registration Meetings package Airports and destinations book a package that includes meetings. Suppliers get limited request rights.
- About 6 weeks before Airlines first Airlines enter the system, set unavailable times and add colleagues to their schedule.
- About 4 weeks before Requests open Airports and tourism delegates request named airline delegates. Popular slots go first.
- Final week Diary closes The final schedule is created. An on-site system handles requests for open slots.
- Event days 20-minute meetings Fixed tables and time slots. Airlines with the most meetings stay at one table.
- After the event Follow-up Data requests, a visit or a second meeting at the next regional edition.
At Routes Europe 2023 in Łódź, scheduling ran from 13 March to 3 May, six days before the event. The organiser expected more than 4,000 meetings across more than 40 slots (routesonline.com, 2023). Aviation Week reported that 80 per cent of delegates at World Routes 2017 received their first-choice meeting, and that requests are handled first come, first served (Aviation Week, 2018). Request early, and request the right person.
The two big formats allocate in different ways. Routes runs on request and acceptance: you ask, the airline answers. JumpStart runs on mutual wish lists: both sides rank, and the organiser builds the schedule. The first gives airports more initiative. The second protects airlines from a flood of requests and gives smaller airports a fairer chance. Neither works without clear rules about who may request whom.
Preparing 20 minutes that lead to a second meeting
Once the slot is confirmed, the 20 minutes belong to you, and they pass quickly. Aviation Week’s advice from the consultancy ASM still holds: treat the first meeting as the start of a conversation, not the place to close a deal (Aviation Week, 2018). Five things decide whether a second meeting follows:
- Fit first: check that the airline has aircraft that can operate at your airport and a network the route would fit, before you request the meeting.
- Demand in both directions: bring a traffic forecast for the route, including the passengers your catchment loses to other airports today.
- One package: present the airport’s incentives and the destination’s marketing commitment as a single offer, agreed before the event.
- The airline’s view: tailor the deck to the airline’s network and say which gap your route fills. A generic airport presentation wastes the slot.
- A concrete next step: end with a specific request, such as a data exchange, a site visit or a meeting at the next edition.
Picture the network planner at 15:40 on the second day, in her seventeenth meeting. Most airports have shown her their terminal and their growth curve. One shows her own network map with a gap, a forecast for that gap and a tourism board representative who has already committed a campaign budget. That is the meeting she reports back on.
Then plan for patience. The Queensland aviation framework notes that inaugural flights typically come in year three or later of a route development effort (Tourism and Events Queensland, Aviation Framework 2025). A route is a multi-year conversation.
Hosting a route development forum yourself
Not every conversation needs a global event. Tourism boards, airport groups and regional development agencies also run their own forums, bringing a few airlines to meet a country’s airports and destinations. The mechanics of the big events scale down well, as long as you keep the airline’s time at the centre.
- A meeting matrix: define who may request whom. Airports and destinations request airlines; suppliers get a small quota, as at Routes World 2025, where supplier exhibitors could make up to five airport requests (routesonline.com, 2025).
- Staggered access: let airlines into the system first so they can set their availability before requests arrive.
- A cap per requester: limit requests per airport, as JumpStart does with 12, so the airline diary is not flooded and every airport ranks seriously.
- Fixed tables for airlines: airlines with the most meetings keep one table, and airports move. At Routes World 2025, carriers with the largest meeting allocations had preassigned tables.
- A fallback: when a typhoon disrupted Routes World 2025, scheduled meetings could take place virtually at their original times (routesonline.com, 2025). Decide your fallback before you need it.
The logic mirrors a hosted buyer programme: one side’s time is scarce, the other side earns its slots, and a meeting matrix decides who meets whom. In a route development forum, the airline plays the buyer.
Afterwards, report what the forum produced: meetings held, follow-up requests, site visits and, a year or two later, the routes announced. Those are the numbers your funders, often the same tourism budgets that pay for route marketing, will ask for.
Solution: Converve supports forums like these with a rule-based meeting matrix. You define which participant groups may meet, for example airports and destinations with airlines. Participants send one-to-one meeting requests, the other side accepts or declines, and each confirmed meeting gets a time slot. Staggered access, request caps per airport, table plans and a fallback remain decisions you take as organiser; talk to us about how to reflect them in your set-up. Our solution for tourism organisations shows the set-up, and how B2B matchmaking works explains the rules behind it.
Conclusion: bring the destination, not just the airport
At a route development forum, the airline’s 20 minutes are the scarce resource. Airports compete for them with data, but the meetings that lead to a route usually answer the airline’s real question: who will fill the seats? An airport that arrives with its destination, one package and a clear next step turns a slot into a second meeting. For organisers, the job is to protect the airline’s diary and make every slot count.
If you are planning a forum where airports, destinations and airlines meet in pre-scheduled appointments, get in touch with Converve.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a route development forum?
A route development forum is an event where airports, destinations and airlines meet in pre-scheduled one-to-one appointments to discuss new air services. Examples are Routes World and its regional editions, and the JumpStart Air Service Development Conference of ACI-NA in the US. Meetings are requested through a meeting system before the event.
What is air service development?
Air service development is the work airports, regions and tourism bodies do to win new airline routes or more capacity on existing ones. It combines traffic analysis, incentive offers within the legal rules, destination marketing and regular meetings with airline network planners, often at route development forums.
How long is a meeting at a route development event?
Usually 20 minutes. Aviation Week describes 20-minute meetings at World Routes (2018), and ACI-NA’s JumpStart conference offers private 20-minute airport and airline meetings, with up to 12 airline requests per airport (ACI-NA, 2024). Prepare a short, tailored case and agree a next step.
Why do tourism boards attend route development events?
Because demand is the airline’s biggest risk on a new route, and destinations can create it. Tourism boards bring marketing funds and trade contacts in the source market. Tourism Australia’s representative, for example, held 20 meetings at Routes World 2025 (The Standard, September 2025).
What incentives can airports offer airlines for new routes?
It depends on the jurisdiction. In the US, the FAA allows fee waivers or reductions for up to two years on new year-round nonstop service to an unserved destination (up to three for seasonal service), plus marketing support. Cash payments and revenue guarantees from airport revenue are not allowed (FAA, 2023). In the EU, the 2014 guidelines allow start-up aid of up to 50 per cent of charges for three years. A May 2026 draft would abolish it from 2027.
How long does it take to win a new air route?
Often several years. Tourism and Events Queensland notes in its Aviation Framework 2025 that inaugural flights typically come in year three or later, after feasibility work, airline approaches, an investment package and an agreement. The first forum meeting is the start of that process.
