Airports are the hotspots of customer dealings. They deal with thousands of clients daily; businesspersons, tourists, domestic travelers, and the people that accompany them to the airports. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the number of air passengers exceeded 4 billion in 2017, with the highly probable chance of it increasing steadily in the coming years. As of 2019, there was a 4.1% growth rate in air traffic.
In that scenario, imagine an airport where you do not see single digital display signage. No FIDS, RIDS, wayfinding – you name it. It sounds like a pretty bleak picture of an airport landscape, doesn’t it?
Benefits of Using Digital Signage for Airport
While the Flight Information Display System is the primary function of airport digital signage, there are a sprawling variety of functions that these LED screens can perform.
1. Optimizing Travelers’ Experience
It goes without saying that airport digital signage improves an average traveler’s experience at the airport. Interestingly, according to Finavia, the most common stress source amongst passengers at the airport was feeling “confused and rushed.”
First-time travelers or not, passengers tend to waver, agitate, and fumble on the airports because the several terminals, counters, and intricate airport landscape is often very overwhelming.
The foremost benefit of digital signage solutions at the airport is enhancing the customer experience manifolds. Developers can optimize the display screens by running signs, helpful tips, directions, and reminders on a loop so that passengers can easily locate their needs. Simultaneously, digital displays are far visually-appealing and vivid than static ones. They appear brighter in color, support animations, and can be updated according to situations. Thus, digital signage screens provide optimal customer experience.
2. Advertising “Hotscreens”
Pursuing financial benefits, and reaping them, is easiest with digital signage. Airports are dense with people, a chief interconnecting road between two prime locations, either international or domestic. Airports are the premium broadcasting venues for the countless brands hunting down their audiences.
Eager retailers are waiting for you to open up slots for advertisements on your LED screens across the airport space. Once they know it, you can make excellent non-aeronautical revenue off the displays via promotions and advertisements because the orders will keep pouring. Brand owners are aware that not everyone boards their flights spot-on – they can capitalize on the “dwell” time spent inside the airports.
3. Entertainment and Information Relay
Besides wayfinding and relaying relevant information to the passengers, the only source of entertainment and engagement travelers can seek comfort is digital signage. Of course, if we are to assume the mobile data is turned off.
Spending hours waiting at the airport isn’t surprising. Flight delays, the processing time of security, check-ins, and customs can be maddening for passengers should they have nothing to kill the hours. Digital signage can help reduce the wait time by up to 35% despite having mobiles in the hands.
It can run sports, weather news, concerts, TV series, and even Disney movies to diminish the torture to some extent. Generally, other kinds of infotainment about the environment and animals can also work fine, as long as there is something to watch on a bright, vibrant screen. In fact, cartoons work even better to keep kids distracted as they can create chaos when not entertained.
4. Internal Communication
Moving from the external audience benefits to internal ones, digital signage screens is an extremely convenient tool to communicate super-smoothly with the audiences on the other side of the fence.
These include airport managers, employees, counter staff, and other workers trying to effectively run the airport realm. Communication is the key to proper management. Hence, digital signage screens placed strategically can exchange information to hundreds of workers within a second. It helps increase the productivity of staff twofold. Simultaneously, communicating a security threat is a prime example of such cases to alert not only the staff but also instruct travelers on what to do.
What do I need for Airport Digital Signage?
There are a few important prerequisites you would need to get your digital signs up and running at the airports. Find below a list to wrap your head around easily.
1. Digital Signage Software
Digital signage software is necessary for the signs to run, especially in the airports where you have to put up multiple screens to cover the land’s enormous size. This requires proper and smooth management, which digital signage software can enable.
Without the software, an employee would have to update and monitor the signs manually with a USB drive. Practically, this is close to impossible. The digital signage software allows updating of data on multiple screens via a web interface from anywhere. Additionally, a digital signage API is an integrative, cross-communicating tool to automatically replicate the data on screens from airport timetables and databases.
2. Digital Signage Player
A digital signage player is a media player that will run the digital signage content to the LED screens. Without the player, the information won’t be able to upload. However, make sure the player has just the right amount of computing power that you need to avoid extra electricity costs.
3. Digital Signage Security Feature
Security should be the next thought-out factor after you’ve had your digital signage screens running smoothly at the airport. Without the digital signage security lock, the screens are left vulnerable to hackers who, in worst-case scenarios, can access airport database and operating centers.
What can I display on my Airport Digital Signage?
The first thing that comes to mind for airport digital signage content display is, of course, air travel information. In such a dynamic environment where flights are delayed, gates are changed, and coordinating travelers is tough, digital signage must be able to operate efficiently.
Make sure the hardware and software you choose can display data from live web pages or be connected to digital sign API for rendering information. In addition, if you can find a ready-made, pre-installed solution that coordinates live airport statuses.
Other content to be displayed on airport digital signage can be boarding gate information. Promotional content, infotainment, and entertaining programs follow suit, whereas images and motion graphics of the latest product releases are the norm.
You can also display meet and greet signs, reminders, alerts, and general wayfinding around the airport map. Other relevant shopping information can also run across the screens, such as how customers can pick up their purchases. Of course, at the bottom line, relaying critical information about forgotten baggage or bags is another practical option.
Digital Signage for Airport: Bright Future Ahead
Increasing air traffic translates to airport digital signage seeing a bright future ahead. They have various functions to serve for various purposes across the airport landscape, from information to alerts and entertainment. And now, given the vast amount of brands looking to hit the jackpot of customer denseness, advertising at the airport is the new normal and future.
Thus, digital signage solutions are enormously beneficial for the transportation, hospitality, and food industry. In fact, now that we think about it, digital signage is a much-needed requisite for all industries there exist.
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