It’s always good to be recognised by your peers and those within the industry you work in, so being named as Airport of the Year at the Scottish Transport Awards is definitely something to be proud of. And I’m proud of the team who have made it happen.

We directly employ around 700 people at the airport with a further 7000 across the campus and it’s those people who make the airport tick. It’s those people who are at the heart of our operations. It’s those people who make every day a big day for our passengers.

That’s where we want to be. We are where Scotland meets the world. I want to be where Scotland meets the world every day for every passenger.

We just had our busiest ever year, and the busiest ever year for a Scottish airport, handling more than 13.4 million passengers – an increase of 8.6% on the previous year. We added 34 new routes in that period, 32 to international destinations.

What that shows is the huge range of options we are providing for passengers, be that the business connections to London, Europe, America or the Middle and Far East, or the family looking to head to a Spanish beach for a summer holiday. It might be a son travelling home to Stornoway for Christmas or a grandmother travelling to Dublin to visit her grandkids. We want to be at the heart of all of that.

An airport is a special place where trips of a lifetime and lifelong memories begin – but it requires a team that strives to deliver the positive experience which surrounds all of that. That’s something we are working on at Edinburgh Airport because we want to be the airport of choice rather than convenience – by providing even greater choice and an even better airport experience we will do that.

We are surrounded by opportunity. Surrounded by adventure. Surrounded by ambition. We are embracing all of that because we want to make the world smaller by making our reach larger.

By doing that we’ll take Scotland to the world, and bring the world to Scotland. And make every day a big day for our passengers.