Dubai Airports Is Taking A Technological Journey, But People Still Matter In Its Strategy

Transcript

Paul Griffiths:Well, the key thing if you're going to try and provide a product that appeals to all is to first start with the customer and understand all their different needs. So what we've done is extensive research looking into different customer personas, trying to understand exactly what a family, a migrating person, someone going to get married, someone meeting old mates, all of those things. They all have hugely different needs, so by understanding them better, we've been able to assemble a catalogue of service products and retail opportunities— bars and restaurants, etc.— that will actually facilitate the journey and provide what individual customers need. The technology is incredibly important, not just to capture that information, but to be able to provide the level of assistance that's needed during the course of a customer journey, especially for connecting passengers who may be under a little bit of time pressure. So we're using the technology to co-locate aircraft on tight transfers, for example, and understanding the passenger flow through the airport so we can keep everything moving. Well, we recognize that 49% of all of our customers could use an alternative hub if they're transiting through Dubai. So we're putting in place all sorts of measures to make sure that we're tailoring for every single specific need. For example, we've got something called Bounce in one of our concourses, which is a sort of trampoline complex, and it enables children to go and let off steam. And you can imagine, for some parents, if they're on a long journey with an intermediate stop in Dubai, actually making sure the children sleep on the next leg of the journey is a very important objective. And of course everyone's got different needs. Business class passengers may want to relax in the comfort of a lounge. Others may want to go and find the latest fashion, which we cater for with our numerous outlets. So we're constantly looking at different ways. But the most important thing is how do we get rid of some of those processes that actually people don't want to have to go through, all the immigration processes, all the security processes. Very necessary, but how can we make them quicker and more efficient? So there are multiple challenges, and in almost every case there's a technical solution which will help us get to the right outcome. I think the first thing is the challenge of overall capacity. Airspace capacity is a big issue, and obviously journey delays are a very big impact on our hub if we get late inbound flights. Then obviously customers stand the risk of missing their onward connection. So getting more regularity and predictability into the operation is, I think, the major priority. And of course, we've got other things like how do we make our growth sustainable? How can we reduce our carbon footprint? How can we reduce our electricity consumption? All of those different things have very prominent parts of our overall approach. Well, the thing is, of course, being such a major connecting hub, one thing we've got to look at is the convenience of that connectivity. And if we can find ways of reducing the connecting time at DXB, clearly that will increase the number of connections, increase the commercial possibilities for our airline customers, and improve the convenience to the traveling public. So there's a lot of challenges to make that happen. One of the biggest things, of course, is we have a very constrained environment. There is no space to build any new concourses or terminals. So getting the efficiency out of the existing facilities is the focus, and technology and process improvement and collaboration with our stakeholders are the essential planks to make that happen. Well, I think the thing is, as far as UAVs in passenger service, that's quite a long way away, I think. And obviously, actually, if that makes the passage of air travel more efficient, that can be beneficiary for us. Obviously, in the short term, UAVs present a few operational challenges, but we've got good detection systems which has helped us minimize the impact of those. Well, I think the thing is automation in its purest form can bring efficiency to models that hitherto have not been as efficient. We've seen what Uber has done for the ground transportation industry. We've had unmanned trains for decades across various parts of the world. So if that can be applied to aviation and we can get the best out of that technology, then clearly we can continue to enjoy growth of the industry without the impacts and without the congestion and delays that we're seeing at the moment. So it's a very interesting topic, and I don't think anyone can accurately predict the impact it will have on the aviation industry. But the debate itself will be fascinating.

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