Passenger Flow Monitoring solution adoption

Copyright: @AéroportsdelaCotedAzur/JFRomero

Knowledge improves action

For a couple of years now, Nice Côte d’Azur Airport has been using the Smart Flows solution inside its terminals, to gain a better insight into passenger journeys and identify ways of improving its business performance and quality of service. International Airport Review finds out more.

The Smart Flows solution is based on collection of the Wi-Fi traces left by passengers in all buildings. “Nice Airport is a special case in that, although it is not a hub, two thirds of the people who travel here are international passengers, and its terminals are also quite small. That has an impact on passenger journeys, which are fast-moving and short. Understanding those journeys down to the smallest detail enables us to measure the stop ratio in our stores and switch from an empirical approach, which is quite reliable, to a data-driven approach. We are able to measure the areas that people are drawn to, hot spots and cooler spots, which we therefore need to look at more carefully,” explained Candice Cadreils, Business Director, Aéroports de la Côte d’Azur.

“Smart Flows gives us an objective overview of the knowledge we have, without the need to question passengers – an intrusive approach that tends to skew the results and requires a representative sample. With Smart Flows, we obtain a comprehensive analysis.”

A full view of passengers

By comparing the data collected, the airport confirmed that the solution was able to track between 95% and 98% of passenger journeys, from the moment people entered the terminals to the moment they boarded their flight. “This extremely accurate data offers an infinite number of possibilities in terms of analysis. We can isolate certain flights, destinations or zones, and determine which route attracts the highest-spending passengers, for example. That throws up some surprises, prompting new areas of study with our partners, aimed at improving our sales and service policy,” analysed Alain Simard, Head of Data Management, Aéroports de la Côte d’Azur.

Valuable data

While he admits that after just a couple of years (years characterised by air travel recovery, leading to a highly contextualised interpretation of the data collected), it is a little early to measure actual gains, he is pleased to report that the airport already has a huge amount of precious, relevant data to feed its discussions with airport operators.

Valérie Chuong, Head of the Shopping and Services Development department, is also won over by the solution. “Gaining a better understanding of passenger journeys and expectations is essential and helps us identify ways of optimising our services. When we see that the economic benefits of a given flight are different depending on its boarding gate, that gives us objective arguments to convince the people in charge of stopover operations to get on board and work with us. Being able to obtain an objective picture of which types of passengers visit which store or look at such and such a product, especially in the luxury goods sector, is an essential first step to any in-depth work on relocating sales outlets.

“Our partners have everything to gain, because we go beyond simply managing flows, and instead start to optimise those flows. In the same vein, we might think about adapting advertising displays depending on zone and time of day, moving towards custom advertising based on traffic. We can also consolidate our quality of service, which is our top priority. For example, given that the lavatories are the first thing people look for at an airport, monitoring flows enables us to adapt the frequency at which they are cleaned, and the same is true everywhere else in the airport. Cleanliness and hygiene are essential, especially since the pandemic. This solution clearly offers endless, cross-functional possibilities for boosting our key performance indicators.”