Airports are a unique area of the travel industry, and arguably, one of the places where the traveler experience is most defined during the journey. So much happens at the airport, all in a short space of time with minimal margin for error.
Airports are a unique area of the travel industry, and arguably, one of the places where the traveler experience is most defined during the journey. So much happens at the airport, all in a short space of time with minimal margin for error. Consider just a few examples:
- Hundreds or even thousands of flight movements in a given day
- Many hundreds of passengers each completing the check-in to boarding experience
- Many of those passengers will be checking a bag
- Stands, gates, take-off and landing slots that must be intelligently allocated
- Ground handling teams that must prepare to receive flights and serve passengers
- Operational plans constantly change, particularly during periods of disruption.
Every action that occurs creates data - from a passenger completing check-in to a runway slot being assigned, to a change in weather, or even a problem in the local system transporting passengers to the airport. Data that can be captured, brought together, and harnessed to generate insights that help airports operate more efficiently.
Becoming insights driven
For airports seeking to become insights-driven, the ability to analyze and act upon timely and accurate data from across their own infrastructure can be transformational. That is why we have recently launchedAmadeus Airport Insights , a solution that offers aggregation and analytics of the data to drive this transformation and operational efficiency.
For airports that operate withAmadeus Flow , our end-to-end solution for passenger services, it’s now straightforward to analyze high-quality aggregated (non-personal) data from check-in, bag drop units, passenger validation gates, boarding gates, and the supporting biometric flows. That’s because the components of Amadeus Flow are integrated, whilst running from the cloud, meaning data generated from each step of the passenger’s experience is produced in a consistent format and ready for analysis. Similarly, Amadeus Airport Insights collects high-quality data from our operational product portfolio too, including theAirport Operational Database (AODB) , which contains up-to-date information on flight movements, collected from all airlines serving an airport.
These insights can help an airport and its stakeholders understand at an aggregated level:
- When passengers enter the terminal
- Where they go within the terminal e.g. lounge, duty-free or a restaurant
- How long they spend at each service point
- How much infrastructure (e.g. check-in kiosks) are being used to meet passenger demand
- How the infrastructure is used
- If problems are being experienced at specific service points like check-in or bag drop
- Where baggage handling problems occur or are likely to occur
Five reasons airports are striving to be insight-driven
- Better matching of airport resources to demand
Fluctuations in demand make it increasingly important to take insights-based decisions when allocating airport resources based on accurate demand forecasts. Aggregating data on boarding pass scans and biometric touchpoints accumulated over time makes it easier to create accurate forecasts. Airports can take this a step further by introducing machine learning to analyze the specific behavior of each flight so they can predict the number of passengers likely to show up and how many are likely to rely on airport services, like on-site check-in.
- Predictive optimization of the passenger flow
How passengers behave as they pass through the airport from check-in to bag drop to pre-security, the lounge, and boarding is a gold mine of valuable insight that can help an airport to continually refine and improve the passenger experience. As passengers authenticate at each of these touchpoints with boarding passes, we know how long they spend at each stage, and this can help to inform real-time decision-making. For example, if passengers are spending longer than average at a particular kiosk, then an alert can trigger an agent support request or a maintenance inspection. Or if passengers from a specific region appear to be struggling with self-service check-in or bag drop, then perhaps the language options on those devices can be improved.
- Predictive optimization of baggage handling
Industry analysis suggests that the number of mishandled bags is on the rise. Yet there is significant data available about the performance of baggage handling across an airline’s route network. By applying AI alongside Amadeus Airport Insights, airlines can identify the baggage routes where problems occur and identify the root cause.
It’s also now possible to predict baggage delays and misconnections before they happen. Amadeus is already working on a project to offer airlines a complete view of mishandling across their network with AI used to provide predictions about expected rates of mishandling per route or expected misconnections. If it’s apparent that a passenger’s bag can’t make a specific connection in time, then perhaps they should be re-accommodated on a slightly later flight.
- New revenue opportunities
One of the historic challenges airports face is a limited understanding of the passengers that flow through the airport. Passengers hold the relationship with their airline and passenger data is held in airline systems, which aren’t typically made available to airports. But this situation is gradually improving as passenger data, aggregated to an absolutely non-personally identifiable level, can be shared if airlines and airports collaborate more closely and airlines agree to such data sharing.
When an airport understands the number of passengers it serves and their ultimate destination it opens new options to collaborate with airline partners. Airports can use this insight to make a data-informed case that airlines might choose to open new routes, maximizing aeronautical revenues.
Amadeus Airport Insights is also able to provide a complete end-to-end view of where passengers spend time at the airport. At one airport in the Middle East, they used this approach to better understand how passengers enjoy the lounge. They discovered that high-value passengers tended to spend virtually all their time in the luxury lounges, which meant they weren’t visiting the retail outlets. The airport decided to introduce luxury retailing within the lounge using personal shoppers, digital signage and shopping to be purchased via an app, helping to boost non-aeronautical revenue.
- Learning from disruption to continually improve
Amadeus Airport Insights is able to help airports learn how the choices and prioritizations made during prior disruptions performed, but also begin to predict and mitigate future disruption. By consuming external weather data to understand when a snowstorm is approaching and combining it with knowledge of past scenarios, disruption can be handled predictively. Airlines can be pre-warned, and collaboratively, decisions can be taken in advance about how to manage the disruption.
It is this advanced notice that matters. Passengers can be alerted before they travel to the airport, with options to rebook. Rather than a ground handler being notified three hours before the snow falls, they can be ready with additional de-icing trucks well in advance to ensure the best possible response.
If you’d like to know more about how airports can become insight-driven pleasedownloadour latest report ‘Building the Insight-Driven Airport.
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