By Gugu Sibiya

Champagne corks have been flying since the InterContinental Johannesburg OR Tambo Hotel received the Skytrax award as Africa's Best Airport Hotel.

The prestigious award s currently graces the hotel's mantelpiece for everyone to see.

Handed over in Copenhagen, Denmark, the award is a source of great pride in the Southern Sun hotel family group.

The World Airport Survey was established in 1999 and is held in high esteem for the clarity of process and rigorously applied rules of total independence.

The results are based on unsolicited customer survey responses, there being no subscription or membership required for an airport to be included.

Throughout the survey period of eight months Skytrax maintains daily monitoring, assessment and validation of customer feedback, with full clarity of methodology and results made available to all airports.

The World Airport Awards enjoy huge respect and credibility among air travellers and airports around the globe.

A total of 11,38million questionnaires were completed by over 100 nationalities of airport customers in more than 240 airports worldwide.

The awards were expanded for 2011 to more than 50 awards. For the first time this included awards for the Best Regional Airports and a new category for the Best Airport Hotels around the world.

"We pay very close attention to the travel trends of all passengers that participate in the survey and it was through their feedback in 2009-10 that we saw a need to develop the survey topics specifically with the inclusion of the Best Regional Airports category.

Alongside this the introduction of the Best Airport Hotel section has been an astonishing success and a factor behind the increase of more than 1,5million extra survey participants." says Edward Plaisted of Skytrax

This is the third award that the InterContinental Johannesburg OR Tambo Hotel has won for 2010-11.

The others awards are World Best Luxury Airport Hotel and the Hotel of the Year by Southern Sun for its Deluxe Brand.

Source: Sowetan