Airports urged to invest more on innovative technology

Passenger experience is paramount and airports need to invest and accelerate investment in innovative technology while focusing on seamless journey as well as sustainability, said experts at the ongoing Airport Show in Dubai.

“Airports need to continue to focus more on passenger experience as assuring the final offerings and services become more passenger centric, and with that more customized to the individual needs,” said Michael Schneider, Executive Vice President – Airports, Siemens Logistics.

“Customer satisfaction is the objective; focusing on one’s experience helps to increase their satisfaction. Happy customers’ intent to come back and create referrals – and that is what every business wants. Driving the number of happy customers up is certainly a competitive task, which can be leveraged through unique offerings or features along the air travel as such.

“Passengers are somewhat the start of the revenue stream and thus the centric source for the businesses to flourish. Most of the revenue streams can be traced back to passengers. Taking good care of them should become natural,” he added.

Naffco’s Aviation Director Ketan Sethi, said: “The Middle East region has taken adapted technologies faster than any other region as it came out of pandemic. Passenger experience is now more of a need than a USP or competition.”

“The pandemic has forced the airport industry to bring touchless journeys for the passenger and airport staff, for safety. This led to big business demand for self-service systems at airports like self-bag-drop, self-check-in, facial recognition, automatic tray return system and tray sanitization at the security counters,” he said.

Aziz Cakir, Vice President for the Middle East and Africa at ADB Safegate, one of the world’s leading providers of integrated solutions for safer, more efficient and environmentally friendly aircraft movements, said creating a “more streamlined and digitally-enabled journey” has been a key priority for the airports and airlines now.

“They are accelerating investments in technology and digitalization to boost operational efficiency and improve the passenger experience, said the official of the company which serves more than 2,500 airports in over 175 countries, including Dubai. The company has completed a new digital airport management platform to manage operations at King Khalid International Airport in Saudi Arabia,” he said.

The UK-based Midstream Lighting’s Commercial Director Yuli Grig said the pandemic has made the airport operators focus on the seamless journey and now airports need to invest in the passenger experience and technology will need to be innovative and sustainable.  

Erik Velderman, CEO of TKH Airport Solutions, said passengers expect a safe and seamless journey more than ever which makes airports look at ways to become more efficient by keeping sustainability and passenger safety as their highest priority. Airports will focus on lowering energy consumption at the airfield, reducing CO2 and NOx emissions and implementing more efficient operations.

Organised by RX Global, the world’s largest airport industry B2B platform has a sharp focus on sustainability to help the aviation industry in achieving a more sustainable airport industry that is aiming to reduce carbon foot print year on year.

The 21st edition of the Airport Show, running until May 19, is supported by Dubai Airports, Dubai Police, Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA), dnata (part of Emirates Airline and Group), Dubai Aviation Engineering Projects (DAEP), Global Air Navigation Services (GANS), and Dubai Air Navigation Services (dans).