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Heathrow T2: Set for eagerly awaited unveiling in June 2014 |
UK. Heathrow Airport’s new-look Terminal 2 will open its doors on 4 June 2014. The airport company revealed the long-anticipated opening date today.
The facility will feature 52 shops and 17 bars and restaurants, which the airport said would “represent the best of modern Britain”. It will be home to 23 Star Alliance airlines, as well as carriers such as Aer Lingus, Virgin Atlantic Little Red and Germanwings. The terminal can handle 20 million passengers per year.
Heathrow Development Director John Holland-Kaye said: “The new Terminal 2 has been designed around the needs of our passengers, to allow them to get to and from their flights as quickly as possible. Like Terminal 5, it will promise world class customer service and a warm welcome to Britain, which visitors expect from the UK’s hub airport.
“This next step in Heathrow’s transformation will deliver a better journey for passengers, a more efficient and reliable infrastructure for airlines and additional jobs, trade and economic growth for the UK.”
The spacious, light and airy terminal will use the latest technology, said Heathrow Airport, offering passengers more choice of services. It will offer a variety of check-in options as well as fast and efficient bag drops, as well as the range of retail and F&B options noted above.
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Heathrow Airport is pledging to deliver an improved consumer experience at T2 |
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The company underlined its pledge to improve the passenger experience at T2.
For families, it noted, this means Terminal 2 will have “spacious, open, pushchair-friendly concourses and numerous lifts. A range of services will make family travel easier, with dedicated family friendly security lanes during peak holiday times, family friendly restaurants and a play area for children”.
For business travellers, it said, services would include a short stay car park with space finding technology and a “˜find your car’ service to ensure quick and easy access. Self-service check-in options will allow business travellers to get to the departures lounge fast, noted the airport company, while connectivity tables and WiFi will allow them to work until they board their flight.
For leisure travellers there will be multilingual ambassadors stationed around the terminal to assist passengers, and personal shoppers to help passengers buy duty free goods.
As we reported in April, Heathrow is pledging to “seduce and surprise” the passenger, in the words of Retail Concessions Director Muriel Zingraff-Shariff.
There is 823sq m per million departing passengers available in retail and 523sq m in F&B. As she noted (speaking at the ACI Europe Trading Conference), this represents less space than is available at many Asian airports, for example, putting pressure on airport and concessionaires to deliver new experiences and better engagement.
The terminal has six key retail directions under the headings:
*New Luxury
*SoLoMo – social, local, mobile
*Hybridisation: the combining of complementary categories
*Transience: making entertainment shoppable and being flexible and reactive to surprise, theatre and events
*Customisation
*Multi-channel: thinking digital and delivering analogue
To put these values into action, Heathrow has challenged concessionaires to be different and help create “surprising, spontaneous and unplanned” experiences. “In customers’ home environments the retail environment has moved on a lot, and we need to follow and be better,” said Zingraff-Shariff. “It’s important that we evolve to increase participation and seduce the passenger.”
Terminal 2 marks the latest phase of an £11 billion transformation of Heathrow. The old T2, opened by the Queen in 1955, was demolished after 54 years of service. Heathrow’s first terminal, originally called the Europa Building, it was designed to deal with 1.2 million passengers a year. By the time it closed in 2009 it was handling 8 million passengers a year.
The main build is on schedule for completion in November and will be followed by six months of testing.
Star Alliance CEO Mark Schwab commented: “Our 23 member carriers at Heathrow generate more than 20% of the airport’s overall traffic. Hence it is only logical that we actively participate in the Terminal 2 project which will become our home at Heathrow. We look forward to moving into this purpose built facility in a year’s time, ringing in a new era for our customers, member carriers and employees.”
The terminal will open in phases, with the 26 airlines moving in over a period of six months. Just 10% of flights will operate for the first three weeks of June, before gradually building up to full operations.
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Commercial was a central feature in the planning of T2 |
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