Airports


 

Airports

 

Yes, believe it or not, the Airports themselves are a business model, and one worth discussing.  Who builds them?  Who profits from them?  How do cities raise money to get them built, and how runs them afterwards?  These discussion and more should be included in our "airports" page....enjoy :-)

 

I think the next great opportunity will be for airports that enhance their customer’s experience.

 

There are nearly 250 major airports throughout the world each handling between 2 million and 70 million passengers per year. Air travel forecasts have passenger loads increasing 5-8% per year through 2010.

 

This will drive the need to improve airport resource utilization and grow non-aeronautical (retail or commercial) income.  An airport's second largest source of income is from its share of commercial revenues, which includes sales from the airport’s retail outlets and services. This can typically represent 30% of total revenues.

 

Airports have identified customer retail spend as a clear growth area and feel that existing airport facilities are under-exploited.  What is needed is an airport service that engages the passenger as a “customer”. This innovative service would enable an airport to capture, segment and understand their frequent traveler/passenger as a “customer” throughout their journey in the airport. This customer knowledge would be used to manage and create retail offers, establish a two-way dialogs with the customer and redeem accepted offers, with the objective to increase the customer’s retail spend and thereby their positive airport experince (not to mention increasing the airport's revenues). 

 

The service proposition must focus on knowing the customer, their specific needs and delivering on them, in essence, “Winning through Customer Knowledge”. It would provide direct and quantifiable benefits to the airport and their customers, the traveling public, essentially increasing customer spend at airport retail outlets, new revenue streams from existing airports assets and an improved customer travel experience. This service proposition would provide a great opportunity for airports to provide a new portfolio of services through next generation customer interaction. It should focus on turning 'passengers' into 'customers'.