Christina Lawford: CEO of DiamondAir
From pioneering the world’s first airport meet-and-assist network to creating En Route, Christina Lawford has spent her career removing stress from travel. Her next ambition is to ensure that the ease and dignity she’s built for the few becomes a reality for everyone.
◦ 5 min readFrom pioneering the world’s first airport meet-and-assist network to creating En Route, Christina Lawford has spent her career removing stress from travel. Her next ambition is to ensure that the ease and dignity she’s built for the few becomes a reality for everyone.
Redefining the Airport Experience
For more than three decades, Christina Lawford has been shaping how the world experiences the airport.
At just eighteen, she began greeting passengers at UK airports, helping them navigate check-in and security with calm assurance. What started as a one-woman operation became DiamondAir International, a company that redefined airport hospitality by introducing a more personal, human kind of service.
Today, DiamondAir provides premium meet-and-assist experiences for travellers around the world, guiding clients through every stage of their journey, from kerbside to gate. They coordinate check-in, security, baggage and immigration, ensuring smooth, stress-free travel whether passengers are departing, arriving or connecting. Over time, that precision and warmth have earned the trust of the world’s leading airlines, airports and corporates.
DiamondAir now operates in more than 630 airports and train stations worldwide, and has expanded through services such as Airport Concierge, Airport by Invitation, and En Route, a premium off-airport check-in and lounge concept that lets travellers begin their journey before reaching the terminal.
Every development has carried the same intention: to remove stress from travel and replace it with calm and confidence.
Now, as the world changes and people’s needs become more varied and visible, Christina believes the next phase of luxury travel must recognise that inclusion is part of genuine care.
The Next Chapter of Luxury
“Luxury has always been about time and care,” says Christina. We live in an age where awareness is sharper about accessibility, neurodiversity, mobility, and the emotional pressures of modern travel. For Christina, this awareness shouldn’t sit outside of luxury it should define it.
“From the beginning, DiamondAir was built around empathy,” she says. “We created calm in a place that didn’t have any. Inclusion is simply extending that calm to more people.”
Making Inclusion Practical
At DiamondAir, inclusion isn’t a statement it’s built into the way the company operates.
The business is investing in its technology, making accessibility a consideration in how this will be developed, so that every traveller can navigate them independently and with confidence.
DiamondAir’s training for our airport agents continues to focus on recognising unspoken needs and responding with quiet awareness. “It’s about noticing what matters, the way someone hesitates before security or needs extra time to process instructions those are the moments that decide whether a journey feels effortless or not.”
Underpinning it all is the idea that every traveller, regardless of circumstance, should experience the same level of calm, respect and ease.
Acknowledging the Gap
Christina is honest about the state of airport services today. “If we’re truthful, this industry hasn’t always considered inclusion as deeply as it should,” she says. “Airports were built around process and efficiency not necessarily people. That’s changing, but there’s still a long way to go.”
As awareness grows, DiamondAir is welcoming that change and playing its part in moving the standard forward. “We’re seeing greater recognition of people’s different needs, whether that’s mobility, sensory sensitivity, or just the desire for a calmer experience,” she says.
From travellers managing health conditions to families with young children, from guests who value privacy to those who simply want reassurance through busy environments, DiamondAir’s teams are already trained to adapt.
“It’s not a specialist layer of our business,” Christina adds. “It’s who we are. We’ve always worked this way with care, attention, and respect for each person’s circumstances.”
Be it language barriers, mobility issues or just the stress of navigating a new airport, our approach has always been to include others in the experience to make life simpler, not harder,” Christina says.
A Career Built on Care
Christina’s career has always been about seeing what others don’t. From launching Heathrow’s first premium meet-and-assist service to founding AMAC, the global association for independent airport service providers, she has consistently challenged how the industry defines service and quality.
Her work extends beyond DiamondAir. She mentors women in leadership, and supports homelessness charities, all part of the same belief that businesses should make life better for people.
DiamondAir’s progress will continue quietly but deliberately. The company is embedding accessibility into its values and ways of working.
Luxury Without Barriers
True luxury isn’t about status or scale. It’s about feeling understood the reassurance that someone has already thought ahead that every detail has been considered, and that no one is left behind in the process.
As DiamondAir looks to the future, the goal is clear, to keep delivering the same calm precision that has defined the company for decades, while ensuring it reflects the changing world it serves.
Inclusion isn’t something new for DiamondAir, it’s simply continuing to do what they do best looking after people.
For more information about DiamondAir please visit www.diamondairinternational.com