Putting Passenger Experience First Brings Major Growth for Finavia
Finland’s economic growth over the past few years has also reflected in the number of flight passengers being handled at the country’s airports, which is currently growing at an average of 10% every year.
Last year, Finavia’s new CEO immediately started looking ahead to maintaining passenger experience during this growth, not only during the planned extension and capacity expansion plans but far beyond. Putting passenger experience as a key focus throughout the Finavia network of 21 airports is already paying off and showed in the first six months of 2018 when passenger numbers saw growth of 119%.
Strengthening Helsinki Airport to become a hub for both Europe and Asia is Kimmo Maki’s vision as CEO. He said that passenger experience, capacity and cooperation with airport customers are key areas for focus to build on an already high level. With a background in logistics, Maki understands that some of the core issues and challenges faced by airport operations can be streamlined in similar ways through automation.
Keeping passenger experience high while managing growth
Planned investments into Helsinki Airport are expected to take capacity up to 30 million annual passengers. Connections are vital to Finland’s growth and expansion of routes is also planned for this year. As airports increase capacity it is important to ensure that infrastructure and solutions are in place to cope.
Growing airports have additional revenue opportunities with better passenger facilities in addition to contributing positively to passenger experience. The integration of emerging technologies enabling automation can relieve pressure on resources and give greater visibility and enhanced decision-making capabilities through more efficient operational management.
The additional space and facilities offer passengers more choice and control of their journey. This by itself can strengthen passenger experience. When solutions make information more widely accessible and in greater volume, passengers feel much more comfortable and less frustrated.
How automation can help achieve an enhanced airport experience
The automation, integration and simplification of infrastructure and IT software and solutions is at the heart of success for many airports of all sizes. Passenger experience is high on the priority list for many airports and airlines, not just in Finland. Competitive pricing, rising airport costs and increasing mandatory regulations all spell pressure and challenges for operators.
Through industry participation and working closely with our customers, A-ICE understands that passenger experience is a high priority. Increasing mandatory regulations mean that operators need to be streamlined and transparent in almost every area.
We’ve introduced a fully integrable range of solutions that can be tailored to the precise needs of today’s operations, but scalable and flexible enough to adapt to those of tomorrow. Talk to us about our Airport-in-a-Box solution to coping with growth while maintaining high standards of customer service.