Airport Experience® News - Post-Conference Issue 2025

Holograms Elevate the Travel Experience.” He began by describing his company’s hologram innovation. “We have created a technology that actually bridges the physical to the digital by creating a life-like presence that creates a very emotional connection,” he said. He offered several examples of how holograms can add to the airport experience, the first being a hologram concierge that welcomes travelers and can speak in each traveler’s native language by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to share real-time information and guidance as the traveler moves from curb to gate. Additional hologram examples he offered included as an agent at the ticket counter equipped with real-time flight and traveler itinerary information; as a security agent that can use biometrics to pre-screen travelers as they enter the security line; as an immersive entertainment element, such as having a celebrity – in Bouman’s presentation Howie Mandel is shown – beamed into the airport to engage with travelers and increase dwell time; and as a way to run advertisements and promotions for airport concessions. “Think about each of these touch points as an opportunity to create a brand experience with the traveler,” Bouman added. “And keep in mind that we can create unique experiences based upon the persona of the traveler, and depending on how sophisticated the AI, we can even identify those travelers through vision, and so it requires no prompting at all from the travelers.” The next presentation, “Digital Advantage: Driving Loyalty & Revenue in a Connected World,” came from Atousa Ghoreichi, senior vice president of digital for Avolta North America . “In our own business, we have 2,000 distinct digital endpoints, between QR codes, self-order, imaging from cameras, mobile order and pay, and Amazon Just Walk Out,” she began. “But one of the things that we really need to understand is when you think about the omni-channel journey and the experience that the traveler goes through, we have to consider, are we showing up where they are?” Ghoreichi pointed out that smartphones are the future and “that’s where we need to show up,” meaning that operators need to be engaging directly with travelers through their phones and, hopefully, making them happy. How to make them happy lies in asking them directly, so Avolta surveyed travelers and learned that 70% desire a unique loyalty program when they travel and 80% are mostly concerned about

where they’re aggregating, and this is great, especially for our operational colleagues managing flow,” Ma said, adding that this data can also be used to learn where travelers are shopping are how they’re spending their money. “That is really powerful data – we never had that before, so I’m really excited that we have this integrated platform with our digital twin to move forward, to better understand our customers and to be able to predict not only sales, but how we use our commercial area and how we create a more elevated experience for our passengers. We can be more targeted in how we want to promote a commercial program, we can now track promotions and marketing, and we can better utilize our real estate and better understand where we need to have our colleagues and employees.” Ana Živanovi ć , principal of strategic initiatives in the chief digital transformation office for San Francisco International Airport (SFO), closed out the session with a discussion of “SFO’s Airport Technology Improvement Program,” which is the airport’s virtual runway for technology adoption. “We’re working towards leveraging technology to address future challenges, increasing ownership of airport data, optimizing our current asset utilization that comes from being a highly constrained airport, standardizing technology infrastructure, and finally, elevating airport operations, and that extends into the concessions space as well,” Ž ivanovi ć said. There are four focus areas that make up the structure of SFO’s Technology Improvement Program (TIP), including infrastructure enablement, augmented guest experience and revenue programs, technology upskilling, and cybersecurity enhancements. “TIP is ultimately providing a blueprint for future partnerships – we want to make sure that our roadmap stays relevant for the next three to five years through stakeholder engagement in the form of a technology governance board we’re starting at the airport,” Živanovi ć added. “It’s definitely a different way of thinking about technology that we haven’t had the chance to do before, and it ultimately comes from that buy-in from across our stakeholders and at the same time looking inward within our own teams and seeing where our gaps are and what our technology challenges are.”

Above: Benedict Ma, director of passenger retail experience, Vancouver Airport Authority.

discounts, special offers and exclusive opportunities. In addition, 78% of customers want immediate gratification, which usually occurs on their smartphones. With this information, Avolta in October launched Club Avolta, which is up to 1.6 million users in North America and 10 million-plus globally, and provides exclusive rewards and discounts. “These are the things that travelers told us they wanted, and this is the embedded DNA of the loyalty program that we’re delivering to the business today,” Ghoreichi said. “What we are certain of is that a loyalty platform that connects with a customer is something that’s always going to stay relevant.” Benedict Ma, director of passenger retail experience for Vancouver Airport Authority , spoke on the topic of “Optimizing Airport Commercial Revenue Via Digital Twin Technology.” He showed a slide of Vancouver International Airport (YVR)’s digital twin, which is used to track data from travelers, planes and checked bags. “We can see arrivals, we can see departures, we can see the number of passengers in the terminal, we can see where there are queues, we can see heat maps around the quantity of folks and

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AX NEWS MAY 2025