The goal of providing excellent customer service to airline passengers is not exclusive to the airlines. From the moment someone leaves their home or hotel and begins their journey to a destination via the airport, there are countless opportunities to set the tone for their day. Though airports cannot influence every experience along the way, they do their best to ensure a positive impression from the curb to the gate.
Whether someone is in their hometown airport or thousands of miles from home in a foreign country, one key to ensuring a positive experience is minimizing points of frustration. This can be accomplished through well-placed, clear, concise signage. From the instant a passenger enters the airport’s domain, there is a labyrinth of signs to be navigated, typically beginning on roadways leading into an airport to guide drivers toward a parking or drop off area. Once inside the departures area, signs are there to ensure travelers can find the correct airline for curbside check-in, or the correct ticket counter inside the terminal building. Once they are finished checking their bags, how do they get to their gate area? Which security checkpoint should be used? How far away is the gate – is it a short walk or a series of tram rides?
In many areas throughout the airport, McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas offers touchscreen directories to assist passengers in finding restaurants, shopping, VIP lounges, ATMs, pet relief areas, nursing stations and so on.
Seeking answers to questions can become moments of stress and frustration, or conversely, wonderful surprises of ease and logic. Airports are constantly trying to get the right information to the right passenger at the right moment. It sounds simple enough until you consider that not everyone wants the same information at the same time. If you have two travelers walking the same direction at the same time, side by side, one may be looking for their gate and one may be trying to find the closest fast food outlet. In the world of airport signage there is a constant challenge to find a balance between providing passengers with what they are looking for and giving them what they didn’t know they wanted. Even people from the same city leaving town on the same flight may have different knowledge, experience and points of view. They may be flying for the first time in their life, or they may be a seasoned traveler that spends more time in airports than in their own home each month – or so it may feel. So how do airports meet the aforementioned challenge?
One of the best tools we have is digital signage. Signs in general are an effective means to relay important information, but digital signs open up a whole new realm of possibilities and, when used properly, the potential for an elevated level of customer service. Digital signs on the roadways allow airports to inform drivers of construction, traffic accidents or changes to where airlines are located to help them avoid potential delays. However, at McCarran we have realized the most significant benefit of digital signage at the departures curb.
When McCarran opened its Terminal 3 in 2012, we took the many years of lessons from Terminal 1 and 2 and incorporated those into the T3 design, including adding digital signage to the departures curb check-in areas. Some airlines only offer seasonal service to Las Vegas, or may only have service certain days of the week. Under the old static sign format at times there were counters at the curb that were closest to the doors, but were not used because they were assigned to an airline that was not flying that day. At the same time, airlines that were offering service were operating at counters further away, thus forcing their passengers to walk further. And when the temperature outside is 110 degrees, every wasted step matters. With the addition of digital signage at the curb, we were able to move airlines from one position to another quickly and easily. We applied the same strategy to the ticket counters inside the building, as well. With Terminal 3’s linear design – 1/2 mile from end to end – placing the digital screens at the curb, synched to the digital screens at the ticket counters inside, ensured customers a shorter walk to the counter.
Once through the security checkpoint, the possibilities for digital signage open up even more. Digital displays make it quick and easy to move airlines from one gate to another, but the real opportunity for creative applications is with the concessions, including food and beverage, retail, gaming and advertising. Many of our food and beverage concessionaires have implemented digital menu boards that make it quick and easy to keep up with seasonal or passenger demographic changes to their menus. For example, when Hainan Airlines started direct service from Beijing, we asked some of our restaurants to add some items to their menus to accommodate the preferences of Asian customers. We made a similar request of our news and gift stores in the area. Because they have digital screens on the outside of their storefronts, they had the ability to highlight the addition of the new products to encourage the Asian passenger to come inside. Over the last few years almost every new retail store at the airport has incorporated digital signage in one way or another.
Because we are in fabulous Las Vegas, even at McCarran we are able to offer something that other airports do not: slot machines. The world of gaming has understood the benefits of digital signage for a long time. Every few months there seems to be bigger and brighter games from which to choose. We have an ever-expanding variety of poker and slot machines throughout the terminal buildings, each of which tries its best to get each passerby to stop, sit down and play. Fun fact: McCarran has had more Wheel of Fortune winners than any of the hotels in town.
Advertising is where the airport has seen the greatest variety of digital signage applications. Samsung sponsors a spectacular 100-screen digital wall in D gates to greet arriving passengers as they ride down the escalators. This location is tied to smaller video walls in A, B and C gates, as well, and runs one video loop simultaneously. That allows McCarran’s contracted advertising company, Lamar, to offer a package to potential advertisers, which covers all four concourses.
In Terminal 3, there are digital “Gate Pylons” that identify each gate and have six screens on each side. In addition to flight and weather information, these networked pylons are able to run images of rolling dice that travel from one gate to the next, all the way down the terminal. Not only does this help reinforce a sense of place, but it also provides an impactful visual – it’s just cool. Since T3 is McCarran’s newest terminal building, together with Lamar, we were able to set up multiple networks of video walls in the gate areas, domestic down escalators, international down escalators, in baggage claim and in the arrivals corridor. This gives great flexibility and allows Lamar to offer different packages of coverage that cater to the various audiences whom advertisers wish to target.
Whether you are a first time visitor or leaving Las Vegas after prior trips here, digital signage helps the airport and its tenants provide more information to more people. Regardless of whether the message is meant to help passengers reach their gate, decide what to eat, find that last minute souvenir or enjoy some quality time, digital signs offer more options, greater flexibility and less waste.
Though these are certainly important reasons to incorporate digital into any signage program, one added benefit is FUN! Like the image of the dice rolling down the terminal on the gate pylon screens, digital signage -- combined with the proper infrastructure -- offers virtually limitless potential for new ways to both inform and entertain customers. McCarran is in the beginning stages of revamping the advertising in its Terminal 1 baggage claim areas, and while it will not be ready for DSE 2018, we are looking forward to offering a “Wow” experience for passengers arriving for DSE 2019.
Michael Oram serves on the Digital Signage Expo Advisory Board and will be co-presenting the 30-minute webinar, “Enhancing the Airport Customer Experience with Digital Signage,” on Thursday, February 15 at 2pm, EST. Registration is free, but required and available at https://www.digitalsignageconnection.com/dse-webinar-series-enhancing-airport-customer-experience-digital-signage.
Michael Oram has more than 10 years of experience in the airport concession industry, including planning, development and implementation of the concession program for the new International Terminal at McCarran International Airport. During his time at McCarran, he has been responsible for the management of Specialty Retail, News & Gift, Gaming, Food & Beverage and Indoor and Outdoor advertising agreements. Oram is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism at Valley High School.
