Tech, Talks, and Trends at ACI-NA 2024
ACI-NA 2024 host Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR) put on a stellar event with top-notch hospitality, creating a great atmosphere for warm interactions with attendees and seamless guidance throughout the venue.
Panel discussions were insightful, though some talks included buzz words like “passenger flow” and “curb to gate” but did not delve into specific, actionable problems. As someone dealing regularly with the operational challenges at airports in North America, I found myself yearning for more concrete examples and tangible solutions—a sentiment that was shared by airport operators I talked with during the event.
An industry rebound, propelled by a rise in air travel across passenger classes, has created new opportunities and revived some old concerns. Among the challenges facing airports of all sizes: cost management, wait times, airside spending and the performance of service providers. Discussions with existing customers—including GRR—and airport operators considering a people flow management system covered many topics, but IT management costs, resource costs, and improving non-aeronautical revenue were recurring themes.
ACI-NA 2024 Host GRR Improve Passenger Flow with Xovis' AERO
IT Costs Management
The airport management industry has been revolutionized by SaaS solutions, which continue to help operators maximize resource value. The conversation around cloud-native, fully managed services at ACI-NA helped my colleagues and I better understand the motivations behind airports' interest in migrating from on-prem solutions.
Airport operators are always looking for ways to better manage costs without putting security or functions at risk. The new generation of SaaS solutions are giving more stakeholders the confidence to move away from on-premises solutions requiring special staff and server infrastructure.
Fully managed people flow services, like AERO from Xovis, help operators limit IT costs by providing a stable solution with automatic maintenance updates, reducing downtime associated with on-prem updates.
Maximizing Resource Value
Human resources, infrastructure resources, limited resources—all topics of discussion at Xovis ACI-NA 2024 booth. The North American labor market, particularly the US, may not be as tight as it was in 2022 or 2023, by finding and retaining staff at airports—usually far removed from urban centers—remain a challenge.
Airport operators are deploying automated systems throughout the terminal to optimize the allocation of limited resources, from check-in desks to janitorial staff. AI-powered and machine-learning-based solutions have grown in importance for airports big and small. In the passenger flow management segment, that means self-learning solutions that reduce the need for manual intervention.
One of the exciting things to hear in Michigan is that more Xovis customers are using our system not only to measure throughput and wait times, but also performance at areas outside mission-critical processes. The ability to capture rich data about many different processes is crucial for optimizing many different processes, reducing unnecessary cost in the process.
Non-Aeronautical Spending
The commercial side of airport terminal operations is what helps to lead the transformation that has seen airports grow from transit hubs to experience centers. In Michigan, the focus on using the abundant data from airports to improve the performance of airside and landside concessionaires was pronounced.
Operators looking for ways to boost commercial performance are embracing a data-driven approach that prioritizes developing a deeper understanding of how passengers interact with different commercial offerings. And airports are getting creative in how they use different data sources to make better decisions.
The industry push for enhanced data sharing among stakeholders and passengers seems to be gaining traction, especially as it relates to boosting revenue.
Tags: | airports| AI airports | passenger experience | data quality | terminal operations |
