Airports Transforming in Destination Itself

WHILE TRAVELLING, majority of the time is being spent transiting from one destination to the other. People seek comfort and convenience at the airport. They desire for absolute contentment sometimes with a touch of luxury, too. Hence, airport hospitality plays an important role in providing a memorable experience to travellers.

The demand for seamless, custom-fit services is ever growing from hassle-free pre-flight procedures, reinvigorating shopping or dining experiences, well-being and fitness, with the list to go on. Such need and desire has majorly contributed towards the transformation of airports in a destination itself. This is where the new generation airport lounges come into play: to provide ample comfort along with food, private resting areas, recharging stations, complimentary Wi-Fi and a lot more.

Airport Hospitality seems to be more promising in the coming time with design and technology playing an important role in providing the desired comfort to travellers. The new generation lounges are becoming smart with time. Though, only a few lounge operators are providing access on pay and use basis. Another way of accessing these lounges could be through corporate a card that includes selected credit and debit cards though, it depends upon your card issuing bank.

The number of travellers across the globe especially in key hubs like Europe and Asia Pacific including China and India come across various upgrades from time to time. Indians are travelling to international destinations more frequently and it is not only confined to the rich — even the middle class is taking the plunge more often. Hence, it is important that not only business class passengers but every traveller gets an opportunity to rejuvenate and enjoy the travelling experiences.

The privatisation of the airports in India has further fueled the growth of airport lounges. With the government’s recent nod for the privatisation of six more airports at Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, Mangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, and Guwahati will give fillip to the lounge business in India. It is much anticipated that with the closer collaboration among the airports and travel industry players, a ‘Customer-First’ airport hospitality experience can be attained.

While India is set to become the third largest aviation market by 2020, the passenger traffic is also expected to increase to 421 million from 264.99 million in 2018-19. The travel and tourism industry is also forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 6.66 per cent to US$ 423.7 billion in 2026 from US$ 100 billion in 2017. With all these predictions, I am expecting to see more new-generation lounges coming very soon.