A future baggage reclaim: innovating around the passenger at the A-area

Abstract

With the growing amount of passengers, airlines and airports in the aviation industry nowadays, airports are constantly trying to differentiate themselves in the market. To accomplish this differentiation, there is an increasing focus on the passenger experience. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AAS) currently experiences capacity problems that pressurize this passenger experience. Schiphol Group realized that to become Europe’s preferred airport with AAS, involving the passenger experience in improvements at the airport is necessary. One of Schiphol Group's solutions to realize this is by expanding the current airport with a new area, named the A-area. This A-area is a greenfield that not only solves the capacity problems at AAS, but also creates opportunities to apply innovations. This resulted in the following research question: “What are the innovations within the passenger journeys at the A-area of AAS and how can an innovation and a roadmap to implementing it be designed?” This research question is answered by looking into four sub questions that are described below. As an airport it can be difficult to determine where possible opportunities lie to apply innovations. For Schiphol Group to make a deliberate decision on innovations, it is therefore first of all important to understand why innovations are necessary. Innovations for Schiphol Group are necessary for three reasons: 1) improving the passenger experience, 2) adapting to context developments and trends that will be of great importance in the future and 3) to differentiate in the market. These three fields will contribute to the main ambition of ‘becoming Europe’s preferred airport’. Through combining the insights of the three fields, the current situation is translated into the ideal future for passengers at the A-area. This is possible with the use of the essence element of the ViP approach (Hekkert & van Dijk, 2014), which looks for possible futures. This ideal future for the passengers is visualized in the form of future passenger journeys based on the customer journey mapping framework (Abbing, 2010), where the change of touchpoints is triggered by the passenger experiences, context and competition. With the context themes as a basis for the innovations at the A-area, a shortlist with innovations for the A-area is developed in three steps. First, all ideas on possible innovations are collected internally and externally, to obtain as many ideas on possible innovations as possible. Second, a selection map is developed that determines when an innovation lies within the scope of the A-area. Finally, of all possible ideas for innovations the ones for the A-area are selected through the use of the selection map. This shortlist answers the first part of the research question; thus explaining what innovations around the passenger at the A-area could be made. According to the shortlist with innovations, one of the areas of the passenger journey in which innovations can be made is baggage reclaim. Baggage reclaim can be innovated on, as the current passenger experience involving baggage claim is unsatisfactory. Others also notice this unpleasant passenger experience; expert predicts that baggage reclaim will be radically changed within twenty years (Passenger Terminal World, 2014) and new initiatives will arise like Travel Light that provide a door-to-door baggage service. These trends and developments will eventually result in a future situation where passengers have two choices to reclaim their baggage: 1) door-to-door service of baggage and 2) baggage pick-up at the airport. For Schiphol Group to improve the passenger experience around baggage reclaim at the airport, four bottlenecks should be addressed. These four bottlenecks are combined in one design goal: Design a baggage reclaim with a 1) more efficient process that is able to 2) send personal baggage information to passengers within a reclaim 3) atmosphere and 4) facilities that are a pleasant experience for passengers. This design goal is further developed into two interrelated concepts to improve the passenger experience around baggage reclaim. The development of these concepts, together with an implementation roadmap answer the second part of the research question. The iBag is a proven-concept solution for the lack of information regarding baggage towards passengers, as it is able to provide passengers with personal real-time information about their piece of baggage through the use of RFID technology and a cloud service system. The other three of the bottlenecks that cause the bad passenger experience within baggage reclaim are the process, the atmosphere and the facilities. The Self-Service Dropout Point (SSDOT) is based on proven-technology and solves these tree bottlenecks. A more efficient process is reached by substituting most of the tasks of baggage handlers by the baggage system. A pleasant atmosphere combined with facilities that form a pleasant experience for passengers is reached by merging the reclaim area with the Schiphol Plaza through a virtual customs border. An implementation roadmap is developed for the next seven years to implement both concepts. For the iBag it is possible to be implemented before 2018, as it is a proven concept and the tracking aspect is required from 2018 onwards according to the aviation policy of IATA resolution 753 (IATA, n.d.). The two major steps for Schiphol Group to implement the iBag are: getting an internal agreement on the implementation of the iBag and making agreements with the airlines about the bag tags with RFID. For the SSDOT there are still seven years to prove that the new combination of proven-technology works. These seven years are enough when using co-creation with stakeholders from the beginning on and start with the further elaboration of the business case. With a quick start to further developing these innovations, AAS can reach a competitive advantage and get a step closer to becoming Europe's preferred airport. Overall, something needs to change around baggage reclaim, which will only be achieved through the start of a project to further elaborate possibilities to solve the bottlenecks around baggage reclaim for passengers. The A-area is a greenfield that creates possibilities for innovations, which Schiphol Group can take advantage of to improve AAS overall.