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Building the Futuristic Airports- Growing beyond the core
Building the Futuristic Airports- Growing beyond the core

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The aviation sector faced one the most disruptive phases during the pandemic. While many airlines and airports have started reviving, there remains a lot to do for the aviation industry. Airlines have had the option to shut down their operations and ground their planes, but airports needed to function even in times like pandemic, for handling cargo. While the revenue of airports is highly dependent on the aeronautical engagements, it is still investing and maintaining a lot of infrastructure components that serve the passengers.

The pandemic made it evident that the airports need to orchestrate and re-imagine their business models, so as to reduce the dependency on the aeronautical revenues. Airports are places where passengers spend a considerate amount of time and airports can leverage this opportunity and explore newer revenue streams. Along with exploration of new streams of revenue, the airports need to transform their operations from a variety of angles such as inclusivity, accessibility, sustainability, workplace transformation, health, and safety. How would the future airports look like?

Enabling non-aeronautical revenue streams

Airports can look towards diversifying their revenue generating segments along with aero nautical revenues. In order to enable a seamless experience for the passengers, the airports should create a partner ecosystem where a revenue sharing model can be leveraged to ensure all the partners like retailers, airlines, Food and Beverages (F&B), taxi services and others can benefit from the same. The lack of collaboration among various partners has resulted in many untapped opportunities. The airports can leverage digital technologies to create an ecosystem of partners and achieve higher operational efficiency. A shared approach will also help in better resource planning.

 Aligning towards inclusivity and accessibility

Social Inclusion and accessible travel are growing trends of the aviation industry as it ensures that the differentially abled passengers also have the same type of experience and access to air services, whether in flight or at the airports, as other passengers. This carries a business and a societal inclination. From a business perspective, it makes sense for airports to invest in inclusive and accessible infrastructure as millions of people who are disabled, are willing to travel every day. We could see airports globally set up unique facilities such as an airplane simulator which allows the disabled passengers to practice the steps of passage across the airport before final boarding. Furthermore, the airports have also started putting sensory rooms for neurodivergent passengers which help them in unfamiliar airport terminals. Also, airports have been deploying staffed that is trained to handle the disabled passengers effectively.

Sustainability at the core

This is one of the biggest impacts making factor in the future of airports. How sustainable can be the airport operations? The airports should plan for use of wastewater through recycling (100% Rainwater harvesting), Solar power farms and power grid optimization, green buildings, IoT-based energy management systems and leverage Electric Transport / deploying charging stations. Sustainability is playing a critical role in reducing carbon footprint for the airports. Using green transport at airport terminals helps reduce emissions.

Health and safety

Post the pandemic, the passengers have become very cautious about the health, safety, and hygiene factors. There is an increasing demand around the digitization of health records. We see continuation of enhanced health and safety measures in 2023 and beyond pertaining to adherence of sanitization protocols, stringent hygiene standards and good air/water filtration systems.

Workforce transformation and human machine relationships

The workforce today is moving towards a big transformation. The roles that we see today would be obsolete tomorrow. So how is the workforce transforming for the airports? The aviation industry may see roles for human employees that are more cognitive and social in nature such as airport inclusive officer, storyteller, wellness travel specialist, sustainability consultant, Digital Airport Services Specialist and so on. For instance, while robots could take over the repetitive and mundane tasks like cleaning the airport floors and guiding passengers to the gates, the employees could apply design thinking to solve complex challenges and establish a social and emotional connect with the passengers. So, the future of the workforce would be a collaborative engagement between humans and machines.

The Future of Airports

The airports need to look beyond the horizon in order to maximize their revenues as well as loyalty. While we had a glance through a couple of aspects in this article, the futuristic airports can additionally think through services like Home to hotel pickup and delivery of baggage, Partnerships with the tourism agencies, value-added services such as lockers and dry cleaning, Grocery delivery programs which would help to ensure the passengers kitchen is stocked as they arrive at the airport and private car parking services. While there are challenges in implementation of infrastructural changes as the aviation industry is still reviving from the effects of pandemic, it would be interesting to see how the future of airports would serve its passengers, keeping data privacy challenges and costs at bay.


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Romil Shah
Senior Research Analyst

Strategic Research Advisor and Senior Analyst with an experience in market research and visual design, assisting sales stakeholders on market and competitive intelligence, thought leadership (authoring whitepapers), customer advisory research initiatives and strategic research initiatives for leadership.

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