Airport Experience® News - ACDBE Issue 2025

ONE ON ONE

WARD: In the aviation world, are your clients all airports or are you working with individual concessionaires as well? PETERSON: It is primarily airports, to a lesser extent, airlines. Concessionaires have always been an important part of our business, whether we’re working for them directly or not, meaning we understand how the commercial plan fits into the whole operation of the airports. Even if we’re not designing a space, we’re frequently brought in by the airport to help on the initial concession planning, along with a true concession planner, to develop design standards that help enunciate the experience that the airport wants to have for their passengers. We help to ensure that the vendors and concessionaries are successful in joining that vision. It’s blending even further with some of our mid-sized airports, who have asked us to design the food and beverage space so that they can empower some of their smaller tenants to offer that first-class experience.

WARD: Which big-picture trends are you looking at as you design new airport facilities? PETERSON: When we are planning the overall environment but also being more vested in the success of the commercial program, we can see how the planning approaches – like the positioning, the degree of openness – elevates the entire experience. Everybody benefits from being able to create an environment that is more engaging, has better circulation and sightlines. We’re seeing more integration, if you will, of the environments. It’s not just a segregated commercial program [where operators are told] ‘here’s your box, go do something in it,’ and meanwhile, a design architect is [separately saying] ‘I have grand vision for the concourse.’ I think [that approach is] not bringing out the full potential of the commercial program, When people are going to be in the gate hold areas for a long time, we’ve been supporting the notion of multi-use space,

Top, Above: Minneapolis-based Alliiance counts its hometown airport, Minneapolis-St. Paul International, as one of its key clients.

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AX NEWS JUNE 2025