Anyone who knows me knows I love stats.
Just ask one of our Airport Business team members. I promise you each of them can cite a time or two they glazed over as I frenziedly broke down readership demographics and explained how an operations manager in their 50s engages with a specific article and length and the format of which it’s presented and time of day they read it compared to a consultant in their 30s. Or if you want to get really wild, let’s talk about news topic preference for airport managers at a general aviation airport in Texas vs an FBO owner in the middle Atlantic and how they flow to secondary content compared to overall readership.
Did I lose you yet? Congrats, you’re one of the 78 percent who read this column this far. And you most likely live near Boston, Washington, Chicago or Los Angeles. Or Mexico City. Or Oslo (apparently I'm huge in Oslo).
Why do I love these stats and trends? Sure, it helps us build a better product (We have the highest recorded reader per article average in at least 10 years) and find ways to engage the industry (more than 300,000 pageviews came to our website via our daily newsletter in 2017, also a record), but most importantly, it tells us what you’re doing and want to do.
And looking at the stats for this year, it appears 2018 could be transformational for aviation. Why? Some of our top read stories for this year were:
- How to use drones at airports
- How to implement new fuels
- How to use digital technology for smart airports
- How to use technology for airport parking
Our mission is to educate the industry and give you the information you need to build a better airport. Trends like these show the industry is hungry for education on topics that were just concepts five years ago.
The industry is ready to take the next leaps forward in transforming their facilities; and the next leaps are some pretty big ones.
Drones are here and being implemented. Technology is making airports easier to navigate. Wearable technology allows leaders to better manage staff. And autonomous vehicles — both airside and landside — are just about here.
We're in an election year, so politically it's going to get brutal. But what I know is the industry will change this coming year thanks to some incredible new technology.
Now have at it. And thanks Oslo readers. I know you're still reading this along with our Tallahassee readers.
