Airports Council International (ACI) Europe* released a report that addressed the benefits of airport wide passenger flow and crowd management during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. The report discussed not only the benefits of these comprehensive airport solutions but also what to consider when choosing the right solution for your airport and how to implement it.
The pandemic changed airline protocols that will stay for years to come. Health and safety rules will stick around as well as the need to manage queues and crowds. ACI’s report discusses the new priorities airport managing bodies now face. They include:
Ensuring passengers have enough space – Airports must limit crowds and optimize floor space.
Reducing time spent at the premises – Airports must provide efficient and fast passenger processing and offer attractive but safe entertainment and retail services during dwell time.
Saving the business – Airports must determine how to maximize revenues through high value services, while adhering to protocols, and not over taxing their resources.
ACI states that in order to meet these challenges, airports must understand passenger behavior. We couldn’t agree more. We are experts at understanding customer behavior.
At CrowdVision | Skyfii, we leverage data from various sources so airports can get granular, real-time information about movement, occupancy, and dwell time throughout all areas. Check out the use cases we enable that help airports get a complete view of the passenger from the moment they park until they board their flight. This knowledge allows airports to optimize staffing at check-in and security, take action to reduce crowds and long queues, and communicate with passengers so they can own their journey. Automating these processes is key to not only manage queues and crowds during the recovery phase but also provide additional value when the recovery phase comes to an end.
Benefits of a passenger flow and crowd management solution
ACI’s report explored the benefits of an automated passenger flow and crowd management solution. An impactful solution not only captures data and processes it in real-time but also analyzes historical data and turns those trends into meaningful actions.
According to ACI, here is a summary of the benefits a passenger flow and crowd management solution provide:
Real time passenger monitoring
- Identify high density touchpoints and trigger alerts when a crowd density limit is or is about to be reached, which enables operators to spread the crowd
- Real time passenger flow monitoring triggers sanitization actions
- Share real time information with passengers giving control over their stay in the airport
Historical monitoring data analysis to forecast passenger flows
- Long-term resource planning
- Adapt sanitary planning to predicted passenger arrival patterns
- Measure and quantify crowds in areas prone to high passenger density and allocate resources to prevent crowding
- Identify specific passenger categories that cause critical crowds
We work with our airport customers to provide all of these benefits by ingesting various data inputs into our AI driven platform and combining it with our expert analysis. This enables them to act decisively to increase efficiency and profitability while improving the passengers’ experience.
Over time, this data builds and can provide reliable evidence for planning, maintenance management, and investment decisions.
How to choose the right solution
ACI outlines how a passenger flow and crowd management solution is an investment in time and resources, but it will deliver business value even after the COVID recovery phase. When considering what kind of solution to implement at your airport, it’s important to choose an integrated platform that is infrastructure technology agnostic. This will serve as the core of your total airport management solution. This solution is what ACI refers to as a “business process centric solution” as it can ingest any type of sensor or existing data and can work airport-wide by default. These solutions help answer a range of business and operational questions.
Although it may be appealing to choose a solution that just focuses on solving your immediate key challenges (queue and crowd monitoring), a complete airport management solution will help you answer future complex questions. For example, a complete solution considers not just health and safety but helps you solve other airport management challenges like how to increase retail spend or provide an optimal mix of retailers for each of your terminals.
ACI provides a list of elements to consider when choosing the right solution for your airport. We would love to help you in this process and show you how Skyfii’s AI driven integrated platform can solve your business, operational, and customer experience challenges.