Cape Town scoops airport awards – but what’s your favourite terminal?

Here’s the surprising news you may have also missed: Cape Town International has recently walked away with two big accolades. First, it was crowned Best Airport in Africa (as well as “Best Staff” and “Cleanest”) at the 2025 Skytrax World Airport Awards.

Then, for good measure, it also bagged the title of number one airport in the world in the AirHelp rankings.

Anyone who actually uses CPT regularly will agree that you probably didn’t see this coming. Sure, the airport isn’t terrible in the least – and this is going to sound like a real slight – but had you pegged it for any big awards?

Yes, there’s a Woolies, Dischem and Vida, and cool lounges. Bidvest and Slow are good and thus jammed, and true, the new Discovery/SAA lounge is exciting (we love a lounge), but otherwise the entire complex just seems deeply functional, or worse – forgettable. And don’t get me started on the shocking taxi e-hailing situation.

If you’ve passed through Istanbul’s newish mega-airport, you’ll have a sense of the competition. It opened a few years back and it’s less airport, more theatre. Sky-high ceilings, natural light and air, luxury brands lined up like a catwalk show, a souk-style space selling fun tourist tat, and in the business lounge, some guy tinkling away at a baby grand. It’s ridiculous. It’s glorious. It makes you want to miss your flight on purpose.

Or Singapore’s Changi, perennial global champ, which has a butterfly garden, a 40-metre indoor waterfall and a canopy park with hedge mazes. People go early just to hang out there. This year Changi took Skytrax’s top spot, Istanbul topped Travel + Leisure’s readers’ list, and Tallinn (yes, in Estonia) won Best in Europe. Even New York’s LaGuardia, once the butt of every travel joke, has reinvented itself and took home some awards.

Cape Town’s wins say less about spectacle and more about the boring stuff: punctuality, staff service, hygiene. All admirable, but even then, I’ve never been blown away by any of that there.

When airports dazzle

On reflection, it seems what I actually prize in an airport is very abstract, very atmospheric. It’s based on no data at all – just a feeling. Do I prize airports because they’re basically malls with aeroplanes? Absolutely. Do I like the unexpected delight of a weird, overpriced toasted sarmie? Also yes.

More so, airports come complete with the frisson of imminent travel that somehow manages to obscure even the surliest customs official and the most depressing high-shine floor tiles.

Clearly, I’m not one of those people who arrives at the airport four minutes before boarding and sprints directly to the gate (how do they live like that?).

I’m in the team of travellers who pop an Urbanol, leave home six hours early, and then while away three happy hours people-watching, testing face creams in duty free and piling snacks onto a lounge plate. Julia Twigg, maven designer and friend of Currency, summed it up best: “Two hours isn’t enough for me in a lounge.” Exactly.

In truth, my real favourite airports are the odd ones. Hoedspruit, for its weird bush-camp-luxe-meets-tatty-curio-shop vibe, open-air luggage collection and everyone in their bush hats. Harare, with its spruced-up terminal, a surprisingly great coffee spot, and the same old Zimbabwe National Gallery store and second-hand book table (a Coke still costs a million rand equivalent, but at least there’s air-con and card machines now). Pietermaritzburg – it’s microscopic but in good shape and has a great restaurant – key when there is only one restaurant. And I had the best jamon roll of my life at Tenerife’s tiny South airport.

Charles de Gaulle is a wretched maze of shiny Bulgari and Hermès boutiques and absolutely rubbish food, Heathrow Terminal 3 has joyfully recently done away with the arduous “removing your shoes” security and it was in Tunis’s postage-stamp departures hall that I bought two spectacular carpets. That gets them unprecedented points.

A few frequent fliers polled on their favs were a reminder of how sexy travel actual is. “Madrid is beautiful, spacious and airy, Doha has a great garden lounge and the ITA Hanger lounge in the non-Schengen terminal at Rome Fiumicino has hot waiters and they make a mean paloma,” said Andrew Holden.

Other popular choices included Zurich (the aesthetes’ selection) and, wait for it, “OR Tambo, where everyone is super friendly, still works despite everything – apart from the wayfinding, which is crap.”

Obviously, the boring basics count too – luggage arriving in one piece, not standing in a queue for 10 hours, that sort of thing – but they are extremely dull to write about.

On second thoughts I’m going to institute the “Sarah Buitendach Gobal Airport Award for a Certain Je ne Sais Quoi”. And Cape Town, I’m afraid, you’re gonna have to work harder to get the top spot.