The Moodie Davitt and Airport Dimensions this week are proudly launching the Airport Consumer Experience newsletter*, sent on a complimentary basis to our entire readership. The newsletter will feature a diverse array of stories related to various aspects of the airport consumer experience, from lounges to health, safety & wellness; relationship management to airport services; landside connections to commerce to culture.
To mark the launch, our introductory article examines how the relationships between airports and their customers will evolve in a world shaped by the experience of COVID-19. Stephen Hay of Airport Dimensions looks at the options for creating a better journey.
The maxim used across the world to rally recovery and create a more sustainable future is as relevant to airport operators as it is to nations, populations and corporations. Building back means creating a better journey – and one starting well before the day of travel. Airports should look to engage and communicate with travellers long before they head to the airport, reassuring them and providing them with the information they seek to return to travel with confidence.
Airports should also promote to them. Without the traffic volumes and footfall to which we had all become accustomed, services and experiences need to be better targeted, and increasingly customers should be encouraged to book in advance.
In a world of caution, the travellers’ go-to asset is their mobile phone. We are seeing this in action, with airports and concessions accelerating the introduction of mobile services to enable the journey. Mobile food ordering is leading the pack, ensuring wary travellers a convenient, touchless and safely socially distanced experience. COVID has been the tipping point for mobile commerce and future travellers will expect this ‘as standard.’
At the airport, COVID testing and digital health certifications have become part of the ‘new normal’. Making this step of the journey easy, painless and stress free is one essential way to provide a more enjoyable journey. Airports are building partnerships to roll out these services quickly, and alignment of digital standards and interfaces is the critical next step to an efficient and streamlined experience, which will help to ensure confidence to travel.
In the departure lounge, the demand for personal space and ‘your own’ experience will extend beyond initial safety considerations, with passengers willing to pay a premium to define their journey around themselves. The provision of new and innovative experiences across the airport is rapidly moving beyond traditional lounges into areas such as gaming, entertainment and wellness.
All of these represent a major opportunity to boost NAR growth and these services will increasingly need to be booked and sold in advance of travel. An Airport Experience Survey conducted by Collinson before the current pandemic suggests that travellers are happy to pay a little more for such services and experiences. In a post-pandemic world, they’re likely to be even more willing.
However, most airports are still seemingly unprepared for this recovery. A recent audit of airport digital capabilities by Airport Dimensions suggests that only 21% of the world’s top 250 airports look to build any sort of relationship with their travellers and only 6% are able to offer a truly joined-up experience.
This suggests that airports need to quickly get better at unifying the currently fragmented traveller relationships and capturing a clearer data view across the journey. Airports lag behind most other industries on the aggregation of data to create a single view of traveller behaviour, needs and performance. This needs to change.
There is a gap to be closed here and a collective journey our industry needs to embark upon. To support building back better, and to explore the many options airports can deploy to enhance the customer experience at the airport, The Moodie Davitt and Airport Dimensions are proud to be playing our part, with the launch of the Airport Consumer Experience Newsletter.
In the months to come, this will collate, communicate and celebrate the very best developments and practice in delivering a better, more enjoyable and more profitable travel experience across the airport.
*To subscribe free of charge please email Cina@MoodieDavittReport.com headed ‘Airport Consumer Experience’. All stories are permanently archived on the Airport Consumer Experience page on this website.
