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Exceptional Airport Experiences Start With Connecting Fragmented Services Around Every Traveler

Tawana Allen, Chief Customer Experience Officer at the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, shares how an operator brings every company in its terminals under a single service standard.

WithTawana Allen

Oct 30, 2026

Airport operators set the service standard for terminals but rarely have airport staff doing the daily tasks for efficient operations. In many cases, staff overseeing shops, restaurants, and maintenance all work for a variety of vendor companies. But the traveler who has a poor experience doesn’t see the different companies and reports their concerns directly to the airport. Delivering a single experience requires a leader who knows the travelers in detail and carries the authority to hold every company to one standard.

Tawana Allen is Chief Customer Experience Officer at the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, operator of Orlando International and Orlando Executive airports. Allen stepped into the chief role in November 2025 after serving as Vice President of Customer Experience there. Since then, she's helped Orlando International earn Level 2 Customer Experience Accreditation from Airports Council International, the global trade group that advocates for airports. With projects ranging from Family Zones, areas where families can recharge, to programs like MCO Rewards, which gives travelers benefits on shopping, dining, and parking, she has cemented herself as a leader who delivers.

CX Current named Allen to its 2026 Top 50 Leaders Transforming CX, placing her among The Pathfinders for her work connecting the journeys travelers actually take. She has spent her entire career in customer experience, spending the last 22 years in aviation, including 19 years at the Broward County Aviation Department, where she oversaw guest experience at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International and North Perry airports.

"We first evaluate the personas traveling through our airport, then we evaluate those passenger journeys. What are their needs and wants throughout the entire experience? When we identify those touchpoints, we work to create a seamless experience," says Allen. The Aviation Authority calls that work "elevating the passenger experience," and Orlando International already holds customer experience accreditation for it. Allen's starting point is meeting travelers where they are.

Mapping the journey first

Orlando International draws travelers for a wide variety of reasons, from theme parks to business conferences to sporting events. Allen's team maps the journey each group takes, starting before they reach the airport and continuing past the terminal, whether they leave by plane, train, car, or bus. "Airports are unique. It's something different every single day. You come in contact with millions of people throughout the years, and they all have their own stories," Allen says. "Some are traveling for the very first time. Some have saved up their whole life to visit our amusement parks. Some are traveling for not so positive experiences, but they all have a story to tell."

Passengers with disabilities are the journey Allen has examined most closely, and many of the travelers coming through Orlando International are seniors. The airport is a certified autism center, and it went through an audit to be named a Wheel the World accessible destination. "Almost every single person in the world is going to experience a disability to some extent in their lifetime," Allen notes. "We learned that we have a lot of people traveling through our airport who have autism or sensory sensitivities, so we implemented a sensory room. We are getting ready to open our second one in a couple of months."

Allen treats the journey as a continuous evaluation, because needs, technology, and the routes travelers take all change. Every generational group travels through Orlando International, and the technology has to work for all of them. "Not everybody is going to buy into the technology," says Allen. "We can't just put all technology out and say, 'Hey, we're not dealing with people anymore, you only can use facial recognition.' We are putting things in place to help improve the journey, to make things more seamless, but also giving people options."

Feedback from every channel

Allen's team gathers what travelers think from several places at once, then reads all of it for trends, for what satisfies travelers, and for what doesn't. "We have multiple ways that we're getting the voice of the customer," she explains. "We have surveys that people can complete via our website. We get feedback from our social media channels. We get feedback that is done face-to-face when they interact with our customer service staff throughout the terminals."

The MCO Travelers Advisory Group, organized earlier this year, is made up of community residents who use the airport frequently. Members report what worked on a trip and what didn't, and then suggest changes. Allen also asks them about new projects while they are still in development. "When we have new projects coming up, we want to get their input into that. How does this impact you? How will this make your experience better?"

Orlando International keeps relationships with its local community and with other airport and industry partners. When a partner has handled an issue Orlando hasn't encountered, Allen asks what they learned and how they would prepare for it differently. Her team also benchmarks against other airports, airports in other countries, and companies outside aviation known for service, including Disney. "We're not perfect," Allen admits. "We're constantly learning from others and we want to be more proactive. But in a lot of situations, it's going to end up being reactive because something's going to happen that we just never even thought was a possibility."

Speaking with one voice

Allen's team sets one service standard for the whole airport, built with the companies that operate there, around safety, comfort, ease, and speed. It covers the employees who work in the terminals as well as the passengers moving through them. "We are like the landlord for the airport. You have all these individual companies that have their own policies, their own processes, and procedures, but we have established a customer service framework for the entire airport community," says Allen.

Her onboarding training for airport employees is meant to make every touchpoint a traveler passes read as one service. "Even though we work for different companies and different paychecks, when I'm a passenger traveling through this airport, I don't care about those individual companies," she explains. "When I provide feedback about my experience, it's going to be based on the Orlando International Airport."

As Chief CX Officer, Allen oversees "MCO Cares," the Aviation Authority’s employee engagement, experience, and training program. It runs a website for airport employees that provides resources and a customer service training manual for downloading. Any airport employee, no matter what company hired them, can use it for their own onboarding. New employees are offered the "Welcome to MCO" program in their first 60 to 90 days, and some companies bring that training in automatically. A culture team inside the same framework works on making the terminals a place employees want to work. "We have to treat our employees right for us to know that they're going to treat our guests right. So, it all starts with the employee experience and then builds on the customer experience," says Allen.

Orlando International is pursuing a five-star rating by 2035 from Skytrax, the review organization that rates airports on passenger experience. Allen's team will keep re-evaluating the journey between now and then. "We're making strides to make sure that a certain level of customer experience is felt across the board, regardless of what your needs are or what your persona group is, it is important that you still receive the same level of customer experience, fairness, and that positive experience when you travel through our airport," she concludes.