UK. A JCDecaux Airport event titled Back to Business this week highlighted the power of airport advertising and shared research which suggests a changing profile among business travellers, the key target group for many high-profile advertising campaigns.
The research was conducted by Attest for JCDecaux ahead of the event, with 385 UK business travellers polled. The results reveal the re-emergence of affluent, highly connected business travellers who are more likely to combine business and leisure on their trips than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The research revealed that 93% of key decision-makers say business travel is either vital or important; 71% have combined their business travel with leisure activities; and 89% spend between one and three hours at the airport when travelling for business.
JCDecaux Airport said that the rise of the hybrid business/leisure passenger represents a powerful new audience for brands to access through digital and programmatic out-of-home opportunities at the airport.
The latest research follows a recent survey for JCDecaux conducted globally among 200 international business travellers which showed that 76% of B2B decision-makers look for new opportunities while travelling for business; and 70% are more likely to notice B2B advertising when travelling rather than in the office.
The London event featured speakers including JCDecaux Airport Commercial and Partnerships Director David Hawkins; JCDecaux UK Head of Marketing Laura Tanner; Global Media and Communications Consultant Peter Colvin; and Cisco Head of Paid Media, EMEA Samantha Zwertvaegher.
The speakers shared thoughts on the bounce back of international travel, emphasised that companies are seeing the importance of human connections once again, and underlined that the business traveller is “getting back to business”.
Hawkins said: “In 2023 companies are back to business and that means the return of offline, face-to-face meetings around the world once again. The airport represents a vital way for brands to reach this premium and influential audience in an environment where they have time to engage with the advertising.
“The rise of the hybrid passenger, who combines their business trip with a chance to travel for leisure is an important new opportunity for brands. The combination of an elite audience, high-profile sites and new digital opportunities including programmatic out-of-home, makes the airport a powerful and flexible channel for brand messaging.”
JCDecaux UK’s Tanner said: “Business is back, there’s a new hybrid passenger combining business and leisure travel and as our insights show, the public screen of out-of-home has an important role to play in driving B2B purchase decisions at the airport.
“The post-pandemic business traveller is looking for inspiration and perceives brands that advertise at the airport to be market leaders. With the new digital flexibility of the public screen of out-of-home including programmatic, the airport offers huge creative freedom and in terms of audience targeting, measurement, optimisation and near real-time play out targeted by data.”
Offering an advertiser’s viewpoint, Cisco’s Zwertvaegher said: “We saw an opportunity during COVID to build for the long-term in airports and to secure premium out-of-home media for Cisco. We believed in the future of airport advertising and knew that the business traveller audience would recover, making this the ideal environment for our brand messaging.”
The session also highlighted two airports where JCDecaux holds the advertising concession which are seeing strong traffic and audience rebounds. The company noted that over 61 million passengers were served at Heathrow in 2022 and more than 11 million at Edinburgh Airport.
JCDecaux said January 2023 estimates show 88% of the post-pandemic audience has returned across airports globally. 
This feature forms part of our new Sight Lines section, dedicated to the world of airport and other travel-related Out of Home advertising and communications. It takes the same name as a successful ezine of the same name we published from April 2019 until the pandemic brought much of world travel to a halt. We are delighted to restore it, initially in column form, as the airport advertising sector bounces back with encouraging speed and vigour. All stories are archived under ‘Airport Advertising’ on the home page drop-down menu under ‘Other Revenues’.  Nowhere do the worlds of aviation and advertising converge more than in airports, often to riveting effect. Given how airports serve a crossroads of humanity, across geographies, cultures, religions, ages, advertising serves as a kind of Esperanto of the travel and communications world, a universal language that speaks to a population constantly on the move. Digitisation, once viewed as a threat to traditional airport advertising as millions of consumers looked down at their mobile devices rather than ahead (or up) at traditional advertising formats, has proved instead to be a positive game changer. Airports companies (and other travel infrastructure operators) and their concessionaires are increasingly deploying the flexibility and targetability of digital communication with thrilling impact. We’ll be devoting extensive coverage to this once again burgeoning sector with a surprise or two along the way. To borrow from both journalistic and advertising parlance, watch this space. * Send us your Out of Home advertising and communications stories to Martin@MoodieDavittReport.com |
