Airports look to strike balance between human interaction and machines
Increased automation of airport processes is inevitable as humans evolve to become more comfortable with machines. While technology brings many efficiency gains for airports, the challenge is to strike the balance between reaping the benefits of automation and addressing the needs of less tech-savvy passengers.
Left to right: David Feldman (Exambela Consulting), Tom Ruth (Edmonton International Airport), Sujata Kumar Suri (Hamad International Airport), Rosario Mazza (Ardian)
These were some of the key points addressed during a panel session at GAD World on the benefits of automation.
Representing the investor point of view, Rosario Mazza, managing director, infrastructure at Ardian, said: “Automation and digitalisation are becoming more and more important in our investment analysis. We believe it’s not a matter of which technology is deployed, it’s about the mindset.”
He added that, from an investment perspective, Ardian sees “a competitive edge for businesses” that have adopted a digital mindset.
But Sujata Kumar Suri, vice president strategy and commercial development at Hamad International Airport in Doha, stressed that automation should be used to resolve specific issues, rather than for the sake of deployment.
“Implementing technology for the sake of it is open to debate. Technology should be used to solve a problem,” said Kumar Suri, noting that many passengers still want “human handling”. For instance, just 20% of passengers use Doha’s automated bag drop and 40% make use of its automated check-in kiosks.
“We have, in a lot of cases, no choice but to give them the human handling they want,” said Kumar Suri, pointing to passengers with very short connections who need to be fast-tracked through the airport by a person. “We are a transport hub so we clear out 50% of our passengers within four hours.”
Attitudes are changing, however. Kumar Suri said that when she conducted a survey in Dubai 10 years ago to ascertain whether passengers would rather be “serviced by a human or a machine”, one person in 10 said they would prefer a machine. On conducting the same survey five years later in Doha, she found that half of respondents opted for machine.
“Last year, seven people wanted a machine and three wanted a human. But there’s a caveat – if anything goes wrong, they want to see a human,” said Kumar Suri.
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In Canada, Edmonton Airports has spent the last two years taking a “customer-centric” approach to automation to ensure that its use not only facilitates the flow of passengers but also improves the customer experience.
“People come to our airport and when they get to one mile away we want their blood pressure to go down, and automation can certainly help with that,” said Edmonton Airports CEO Tom Ruth. Once they arrive at the airport, the operator hopes the “advanced security technology” it has put in place makes passing through security “an experience rather than a hassle”.
Mazza noted that airport passengers in Italy are becoming used to automated processes and take up is growing: “In Naples we are seeing that people are getting more and more used to self-bag drops and self-check-in. For E-Gates we see rates of adoption improving massively.”
Opportunities for greater use of technology extend beyond the airport premises, with mobile phones presenting new ways for airports to find out about and interact with their customers.
“Mobile devices are a huge opportunity for us if we continue to gain the trust of passengers,” said Ruth. “If you know where everybody is in the airport then 10 minutes before a flight if you’re missing three people you could know that two are in the bar and one is running to the gate, so you don’t have to unload their bags.”
For this to work, passengers would need to trust that their privacy was not being invaded and that tracking them through their mobile devices was a way of helping them, Ruth acknowledged.
Connected mobile devices also open up greater e-commerce opportunities for airports, something that Hamad Airport has been using to its advantage.
“While people are diffident about using kiosks they are much more familiar with using e-commerce for duty-free purchases,” said Kumar Suri, adding that the Qatar-based airport has “gone into an omni-channel e-commerce strategy”.
But airports could find themselves competing with e-commerce giant Amazon. David Feldman, managing director of Exambela Consulting, told delegates that Amazon and Google are “looking to get into the airport business in a big way”.
Mazza explained how some airports are using Google to help their passengers, noting: “One of our airports is developing a home-to-gate [concept] connected to Google Maps, to give real-time traffic information so passengers know when to leave home.” He argues that if Google “brings value to your operation, it can be part of the game”.
Offering a more cautious view, Kumar Suri said: “We’re in a position to own a lot of data ourselves so it will be interesting to see what Google and Amazon bring that we don’t have already, and whether it benefits the airport or just them.”
Technology is clearly here to stay and Mazza believes it is better to embrace it than ignore it. “We don’t need to be afraid of change,” he said. “Technology is disrupting all industries and it’s coming to our airports.
“You need to have a mindset where you see opportunities and not risks. If you see risks, you stand still.”