Airports, Airlines, Aviation

What will the future airport experience look like?


This morning I was reading my daily travel news subscriptions – Tnooz, Skift, and the like – and came across a great article on the future of airports in 2025 (thanks Nick Vivion, fellow Duke-alum and writer at Tnooz! (follow him on Twitter @worldli)).

The Future Travel Experience (FTE) Global recently put together a slide deck on what their 2025 airport vision (and what tripchi calls Airports 2.0) will look like. You can find the entire FTE presentation here, but the best parts are really slide 17 and 18.

Slide 17 – The Arrivals Area

Arrivals Experience

I love that this slide explicitly calls our our philosophy that the airport should reflect the local culture and feel of the city that it’s in, and this theme, the city’s brand if you will, should be pervasive in not only the look and feel, but also the dining and shopping opportunities. FTE says “The arrivals area of the airport should also reflect the destination itself to provide a warm welcome to the passenger and to give them a feel of the city/country they have just arrived in.” Hear hear. And way to go Christchurch International Airport and Seattle-Tacoma for excellent displays of airport art.

Slide 18 – A Self-Service Experience

chocolatey airport goodness

Similarly to the awesome sauce on slide 17, slide 18 is chalk full of technology solution recommendations that airports should embrace. The highlights include:

  • Instructions to passengers via messages to mobile devices
  • Wayfinding via simple and technology-driven solutions
  • Colored lines to guide passengers
  • 3D mobile way-finding

But wait, there’s more! If you’re salivating over the ppt, you will love this article that FTE has also written up summarizing the conference and the think-tank’s recommendations, include this tasty morsel:

“Furthermore, every passenger will receive a push notification to their mobile device advising them when to proceed to the boarding gate and will also receive baggage-related notifications via their smartphones, allowing them to track their bags throughout the journey.”

Yum! Can I say more, please?

And, they recommend l “Exploring ‘crowd funding’ as a potential source of investment for passenger-focused projects.” Hmmm…sounds a lot what tripchi is about to do with our Indiegogo campaign! Boy are we all over these recommendations….

Upcoming conference datesThis is definitely a conference we wish we could have attended, and will try to make for next year! See you at FTE 2014!?


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