2016 Design and Tech
Trends in airports
By Elise Krentzel
Airports were built to withstand
heavy traffic and to last decades.
With hundreds of millions of
passengers flying around the globe,
airports have to keep pace with
the needs of their customers. That
means airports can no longer play
catch-up with technology, unless
they want to aggravate end users. At
most Asian airports and at many in
Europe and North America, state of
the art technology is being deployed
and integrated. The way in which
passengers experience delays, food
and beverage service, shopping,
movement and layovers is changing
drastically.
Some of the biggest trends of 2016
include:
• silence and relaxation
• all-in-one entertainment centers
another, passengers require down
time and that means a little quiet.
Angela Gittens, Director General of
Airports Council International (ACI),
says airports and airlines want to
“create a calm, relaxed ambiance” as
passengers dislike being disrupted by
announcements.
offer mobile services such as flight
and baggage status and airport
directions. It is predicted that bag
status updates will be offered by 61%
of airlines. 79% of airports will offer
status notifications such as queue
times through security and walking
times to gates.
It’s no longer uncommon to see
massage chairs, relaxation booths,
showers, sleep pods or state-ofthe-art private lounges operated by
third parties. Passengers want and
need to wind down in this 24/7 no
rest-for-the-weary economy where
our personal and private lives are
blurred. Rushing from one place to
If on the one hand experiencing
OM at an airport is important, the
urgency of locating one’s itinerary
and movement is its extreme
opposite. Smart phone apps are
being developed faster than we can
imagine. Air transport IT provider
SITA has found in 2015, that a
majority of airlines and airports will
The highly-anticipated new airport
in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia will use
way finding technology once
opened. AviaVox has developed
phoneme technology which helps
deliver grammatically correct
language. That’s especially helpful
to passengers who use English as a
second language as translation apps
• mobile apps for just about
everything from WiFi, location
promotions to way-finding from
various locations, queue length,
check-in wait time and baggage
delivery
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