POSITIONING AND RE- POSITIONING: AN ANALYSIS ON THE POSITIONING STRATEGY OF ISTANBUL AIRPORT, RELOCATED AFTER THE COVID 19 PANDEMIC

The COVID 19 pandemic, which emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019, has caused major changes in the aviation industry as well as in many other sectors. The positioning studies carried out as "the world's largest airport " until the mentioned time period changed the strategy with the COVID 19 pandemic. The positioning strategy, which was restructured due to the crisis, also stands out with the commercials prepared for Istanbul Airport and the news in the press. Istanbul Airport implements the strategy of repositioning itself as “the most reliable airport for COVID 19” especially during the COVID 19 period. It has been observed that the current size of the airport has been repositioned as "the world's largest airport" as used in the previous positioning strategy, as "large enough to provide social distance, so it is reliable". In this study, primarily the concepts of positioning and repositioning were examined, and then the global effects of the COVID 19 pandemic were emphasized. In the later stages of the study, the positioning of Istanbul Airport and the re-positioning of Istanbul Airport, which was restructured with COVID19, were emphasized. In order to measure the effect of the repositioning strategy, the press reflections of this strategy of Istanbul Airport were examined within the scope of the research. In order to measure the reflections of the created strategy in the press, national magazines and newspapers were scanned using the keywords COVID 19 and Istanbul Airport for a period of 1.5 years between 02.02.2020 and 02.07.2021. Accordingly, 203 news items were included in the search. The research result shows that Istanbul Airport has established and implemented a successful repositioning strategy for the COVID 19 global health crisis.