The aviation industry took a massive hit during the pandemic but it’s now on a fast recovery path and more people are trusting airlines again for their travel needs. The decision-makers in the airport industry are seeing increased traffic all around the world; however, this increased demand is bringing tons of trouble alongside. Airports that lag behind and don’t address the changing trends are facing massive issues such as airport logjams and flight delays. 

Most of the issues airports are facing can be dealt with an accurate and reliable people counting technology, though. The ever-increasing demand for air travel and staff shortages due to the pandemic won’t magically go away, but knowing who your passengers are, when the airport is pulling the most people, which areas get extremely crowded, how much time a passenger spends in check-in queues, and understanding their overall journey through the airport can help you optimize your workforce accordingly and help you save time, money and other resources. 

Keeping track of passenger movement in real time is crucial for efficient operations, staff allocation, and a positive customer experience. Your passengers would rather avoid waiting in long check-in queues, and security checks and preferably spend their time in a comfortable setting. After all, not everyone is a frequent flyer and most reports suggest travelers who avoid flying usually do so due to bad experiences at airports, of course, alongside with high cost of flying.  Less time they spend in several lines means more time preparing for the flight, visiting stores across the airport, and spending more money. 

Investing in state-of-the-art, extremely precise, reliable, and GDPR-compliant visitor counting systems to understand passenger behavior and footfall for airports will help you maximize your revenue, cut unnecessary costs and optimize your workforce.

Understanding Passenger Flow at Airports

Airports are some of the most dynamic passenger hubs in the world and it won’t change anytime soon. If anything, the aviation industry keeps improving, and flying is becoming more and more convenient. The improvements all around lead to more flights and more visitor traffic, and the industry is still in a recovery period despite seeing massive growth across the world. Understanding the wants and needs of your passengers has never been more important than now. 

The best way to figure out what your passengers (and other types of visitors) want is to use a reliable traffic counting technology that can work in harmony with an online visitor analytics tool for the physical world. Gathering all the necessary information in an accurate and efficient way is incredibly important, but all that crucial information would become obsolete if you can’t generate actionable and meaningful charts and reports out of them. 

An accurate and reliable people counter bundled with just as reliable visitor analytics will reveal the passenger journey across the whole airport. It is then up to you to utilize this data for the airport’s best interests. For instance, if your people counter can provide accurate zone analytics you can then deploy some of your sensors to specific zones such as restrooms, lounges, and duty-free zones, and see how they’re performing. Keeping track of these popular zones can create revenue opportunities, plus save you valuable resources.

Once you get a grasp of what your passengers want and where they spend most of their time waiting for their flight, you can also cut down the airport’s bill costs significantly. Identifying inactive or scarcely engaged zones will help you better optimize both your energy spending and staff allocation and save you an immense amount of money. Focusing your workforce and other resources where needed will also lead to having more satisfied passengers. 

You can also use this knowledge for advertorial pricing across the airport. Hot zones with good visibility will draw more attention obviously; factual and accurate data will justify your pricing to advertisers. You can also create new advertising opportunities based on how popular other zones are or depending on what kind of traffic they’re drawing. In specific zones, you can also use demographic analysis to find out the age and gender of your passengers, and share this data with publishers/advertisers to help them come up with creative advertising strategies. When you can provide advertisers with factual passenger data they may even utilize your less popular zones. 

An earphone brand once launched an ad campaign across airports worldwide to promote their new audio-canceling feature, purposefully picking secluded places where passengers preferred to escape the chaos that comes with busy transportation hubs. The effectiveness of this campaign is a mystery, but real-world traffic counting creates these kinds of opportunities and helps you keep track of how these campaigns are doing.

Real-Time People Counting at Airports

Airport traffic can be confusing at times due to its dynamic nature. A confusing airport can cause passengers to miss connections and regular flights alike frequently. This can also lead to other unfavorable situations and cause passengers to spend less time at shops, restaurants, and other stores. Ideally, it should go the other way around to ensure passenger satisfaction.

A modern and trustworthy passenger counting technology can also count people in real-time, letting you know the number of people entering and exiting key locations at any given time. Having this information also allows you to track shop performance, benchmark which stores are performing well and which aren’t, and increase the time passengers spend in airport shops. 

You can use this feature to track passengers’ time at security checks and check-in counters. It is possible to eliminate long lines or decrease queue time by using real-time visitor data and ensuring your customers spend more time exploring, shopping, or resting at the airport. Real-time traffic counting can provide an estimated wait time as well. Passengers who know how long (roughly) they have to wait in line will be more patient and they’re less likely to cause a scene.

Passenger counting in real-time also allows you to enforce your government’s health and safety regulations in an effective and efficient way, be it the recent covid pandemic or other issues. 

Conclusion

Pandemic-related lockdowns are all but gone and the world is returning to a new kind of “normal”; however, this normal brings lots of changes and the demand for air travel is constantly rising. The majority of airports and airline companies are facing staff shortages and they’re having trouble meeting customer demands. People counting solutions help airports optimize their resources and workforce to meet these demands efficiently and ensure passenger satisfaction.

V-Count excels at people counting and visitor analytics, offering an unmatched 99% accuracy as well as other key features to tackle any issue an airport may face. V-Count’s Ultima series people counting sensors and its customizable dashboard are both developed in-house and they’re getting regular updates to suit specific business needs. All V-Count technologies are completely GDPR-compliant, meaning no face data is ever recorded or saved.

Reach out to us now and we’ll get you connected with one of our people counting experts to help you get started. Let’s maximize your revenue together.