Istanbul Airport introduces Therapy Dogs to comfort passengers

Launching a brand-new experience in Turkey and continuing to enhance its customer experience offering, iGA Istanbul Airport has unveiled the ‘Therapy Dog Project’ to provide a calming and enjoyable travel experience to passengers experiencing flight-related stress.

As part of this new project, the specially trained therapy dogs will be on duty to provide support to nervous fliers, or simply those looking for comfort ahead of their journey. The project currently involves five dogs, who are looked after by a brilliant and friendly team led by Volkan Arslan, the Veterinarian at iGA Istanbul Airport.

“As one of the world’s largest transportation hubs, we host millions of guests from many countries at our airport,” said Abdülkadir Demirtaş, Customer Experience Manager, iGA Istanbul Airport. “For this reason, we are constantly improving our services for different needs and situations by putting passenger satisfaction at the centre of all decisions. Many scientific studies have proven the positive effects of human and animal interaction on blood pressure, stress and anxiety levels. We therefore aim to provide a joyful and stress-free travel experience at our airport with therapy dogs, hoping for our guests to leave our airport happy and with pleasant memories.”

As a pet-friendly airport, iGA Istanbul Airport has a total of four pet rooms, one in the check-in counters area on the departing passenger floor, two additional pet rooms after passport control and one on the arrivals floor, to meet the needs of the pets travelling through the airport. All of the pet rooms are equipped with products such as cat and dog food, litter, cat scratching boards and various other products to meet any needs of passengers’ four-legged travel companions.