Airports are very often places that frustrate passengers but continued improvements present a wide-open opportunity. Sally White reports

Among the many irritants for air passengers is the way forgotten loose change can cause a logjam at security. Another is being stuck bored and hungry at the gate, a vast distance from the retail hall, in a protracted wait to be processed for a flight. On that, and many other airport hassles, the changing pattern of airport management means an end could be in sight.

Driving change is the need to persuade travellers to buy. Yet, says Julián Diaz, chief executive of Switzerland’s Dufry, owner of World Duty Free, the world’s largest travel retailer by sales, “only 16% of the passengers going through an airport buy something”.

An Amadeus survey found that travellers were “willing to spend more time and money at the airport ….if the airport experience comprises inspiring leisure options and a competitive, enticing retail offer.” As the travel technology group added, given the current pressures on airport economics, that is just as well. At the moment airport owners are being forced to look “for an aggressive expansion of non-aeronautical revenues such as retail, dining, car parking, leisure and real estate.”

Convenience and efficiency

However, what comes top of traveller wish lists, according to another survey, this time from global digital flight information provider OAG, is anything that enhances a trip’s convenience and efficiency. Travellers rank “biometrics ahead of many other current and future innovations”, it found.

In a recent market report on travel tech innovation, Mike Benjamin, CTO of OAG, explains that, in fact  “more than 75% of travellers would be willing to use biometrics – such as fingerprints and facial recognition – if they could instantly and easily”:

• Streamline customs and immigrations (85%)
• Check-in for their flights (84 %)
• Get through security without the use of other identification (84%)
• Pull up their itinerary (79%)
• Board a plane without a boarding pass (75%).

He added: “Today’s travellers crave information, control and convenience. The more information travel providers can put in the hands of a consumer – from when to book based on price, and which flight to book based on punctuality, to what’s a reasonable connection time at a specific airport – the more value they can provide.”

Today’s travellers crave information, control and convenience

Mike Benjamin, CTO, OAG

Comfort should be taken from the number of items on another traveller wish list, one compiled by Amadeus just a couple of years ago, that are already in place. Asked what technological advances they would like to see, many listed items giving the wanted control: remote check-in and bag collection, use of mobile phones to navigate through all key touch points, self-check-in kiosks, frequent flier cards as permanent boarding passes, permanent electronic bag tags, automated self-bag drop, ‘self-service’ immigration/passport control/boarding and notification of baggage loading.

The loose change problem could be solved just as rapidly. According to a Barclays' survey, 29% of travel managers say that requests to pay via mobile wallets have increased over the last year and 66% of buyers anticipate that the use of mobile wallets will increase again over the next five years.

And while you might prefer faster check-in, app developers have come up with a retail service you can use to fill in time while you queue to board. Called YourGate, it will get a sandwich or shopping from the retail hall to you at the gate, and is being launched in the US with mobile ordering platform GOLO.

Certainly airport spending is rising. The Airports Council International (ACI) says that non-aeronautical revenues have grown from about 30% of total airport revenues in 1990 to 50% or more today. In some cases, such as Dubai, the figure is reported to be as much as 60%, while others have gone as high as 80%.”

The global duty-free industry is expected to grow to about $67 billion by 2020, according to Dufry, up from $46 billion in 2016. In their quest to keep spending rising, suggested Henry Harteveldt, president of Atmosphere Research, to the Financial Times, airports will follow the high street trend towards ‘pop up’ shops, which would open only for a limited period, their novelty attracting time-pressed customers.

Slick and speedy but still too slow

While some processes at airports have got slicker and speedier, increased security processes have eroded time saved. According to the Financial Times, the time available to eat and shop has typically stayed at around 30 minutes – “not enough to maximise the potential for impulse sales.”

Dufry is using now using technology to maximise shopping time by communicating with customers before they arrive at the airport. Many travellers have become impervious to being directed to walk through aisles of duty-frees. Says Diaz: “The most difficult thing in this business has been historically to contact customers before they get to the airport and when they are sitting down in the corridors”.

Not now! Dufry is teaming up with airlines to pitch retail ideas to customers as flights are booked.