Most of the world’s leading airport operators (80 per cent) are moving towards paperless travel and intend to make passenger self-service the primary channel for check-in, according to a new global survey.

And 52 per cent rated the introduction of 'electronic documents' as the technology which will have the most significant impact at airports in the near future, initially driven by the adoption of bar-coded boarding passes sent directly to mobile phones – a key enabler for genuinely paperless travel.

The 6th annual Sita Airport IT Trends survey, co-sponsored by Airline Business and the Airports Council International (ACI), had a record 106 responses from airports and airport groups representing 172 airports from around the world including 56 from the top 100 in terms of revenue and passengers.

The survey which was launched at the ongoing ACI World Conference in Kuala Lumpur, also found that IT budgets for airports in 2008 were largely unaffected by the global economic downturn, with IT investments as percentage of revenue decreasing slightly from 3.5 per cent in 2007 to 3.2 per cent in 2008. The world airport IT industry is estimated to be worth $3 billion and 45 per cent of this year’s survey respondents expect an increase in budget in 2010 while only 14 per cent expect a lower budget.

“This year’s survey confirms that self-service is a global trend with almost 80 per cent of respondents planning to make it the primary means for check-in by 2010 as is already the case at 40 per cent of the world’s top 100 airports,” stated Catherine Mayer, Sita vice president for Airports.

“Airports are also recognising that passengers bypassing check-in counters may be faced with new bottlenecks and queues at baggage drop-off and security screening areas.  As a result, airports are turning to various automation tools to track wait times at different checkpoints such as security and immigration. Of the respondents who said they will monitor wait times in the future, 60 per cent will use video analytics, 43 per cent will use RFID and 27 per cent plan to use Bluetooth technology.”

The high priorities for airport IT investments are: Passenger Processing and Services (61 per cent); Passenger Security (56 per cent); and Airport Operations (51 per cent). Baggage processing and management also remain among the highest ranked investment areas for the Top 100 airports (51 per cent) but is a lower priority for less congested, smaller airports.

52 per cent of airports rated the use of 'electronic documents' as the technology with the most significant impact on IT and telecom systems at an airport. Initially this will be driven by the introduction of initiatives such as paperless travel and bar-coded boarding passes (BCBP), but is likely to affect other areas such as aircraft maintenance too.

The majority of airports consider mobility as one of the Top Five trends affecting airports’ IT infrastructure in the short-term. Half of all airports believe providing solutions on mobile devices for passengers or staff at airports will have the highest impact on their IT infrastructure.

63 per cent of all airports already have check-in kiosks which will further increase to 90 per cent by 2012. When asked about their strategy for kiosk usage, most airports plan to increase the number of kiosks further, whether for check-in (44 per cent) or for new functionality (9 per cent) such as passport scanning (from 32 per cent today to 58 per cent by 2012) and bag-tag printing (from 17 per cent today to 51 per cent by 2012). New usage areas receiving the highest interest are:

- Common bag-drop locations - 12 per cent today to 48 per cent by 2012
- Automated boarding gates - 8 per cent today to 42 per cent by 2012
- Self-service kiosk for passenger transfer services, - 11 per cent today to 39 per cent by 2012
- Self service kiosk to report lost baggage - 5 per cent today to 36 per cent by 2012.-TradeArabia News Service