Pioneering Change in the Airport World

Because of frequent flight delays and cancellations, many travelers spend more time than expected in airports, where they are often subjected to hard metal seats, blaring television screens and scarce charging or power outlets. Nevertheless, through these times of COVID-19, we have all dreamed of visiting far-flung tourist destinations, something many of us took for granted pre-pandemic. According to the Airports Council International, COVID-induced travel restrictions contributed to a decrease in the number of passengers at the world’s airports in 2020 by 5.9 billion.

As the world loosens restrictions and shifts from the “at home” culture demanded by the pandemic, the travel industry is expected to roar back to life. In 2022, air tourism is expected to recover and travelers will spend more money. As airports emerge from the downturn, we expect a shift toward high preparedness – and outsourcing will play a role. We expect trends to include a new focus on improving hygiene and customer experience, resizing the available infrastructure to the changing demand, diversifying revenue generation, automating and digitalizing processes and systems and increasing sustainability.

In their efforts to improve and grow, airports will need to re-evaluate solutions and opportunities with service providers. This ISG Research paper Pioneering Change in the Airport World explores the current outsourcing patterns in the airport industry and the role technology providers can make in customer experience.

Download this research paper.

About the authors

Titli Chatterjee

Titli is part of ISG Research working as a Senior Lead. With 12 years of experience her focus has been in the areas of Manufacturing and Industry 4.0. She also analyses various technology and next generation trends across various verticals. In her current role, she has been closely working with ISG internal stakeholders, ISG partners and advisors in identifying upcoming trends, developing hypothesis, authoring reports and thought leadership papers for the service provider community, along with custom engagements. read moreread less

Sagnik Biswas

Sagnik is a Research Manager & Principal Analyst in ISG and has more than 11 years of experience in conducting in depth research and data analysis to identify upcoming industry trends. He is actively involved in developing thought leadership and opportunity analysis papers on next generation themes in the global sourcing market focused on the Banking & Financials, Travel & Transportation and Application Development & Maintenance space. Sagnik has also led multiple location optimization client engagements covering location selection, cost/talent benchmarking, and identifying talent hotspots with future skills.
read moreread less

Pratibha Salwan

Pratibha Salwan is based in Atlanta and leads the Travel, Transportation, Hospitality and Logistics (TTHL) sector for ISG. With more than 28 years of experience working across the globe, she has spent the past 20 years in the U.S. incubating, growing and expanding her work with digital technologies across the TTHL vertical. She has worked with clients in the Airline, Travel, Transportation, Hospitality, Logistics and Retail industries, and has been responsible for leading the digital charge for multiple organizations, providing domain-led technology solutions.  read moreread less

Paul Reynolds

Paul Reynolds leads Momentum, a division of ISG that provides research services to help service providers better target, win and retain business. Paul has 25 years of market research experience with specific expertise in methodology development, data analytics and research process design. Having found many service providers’ Advisor Relations functions to lack appropriate analytics, Paul is working to develop innovative new approaches that allow for data-driven programs based on the unique needs of each client. His approach benefits Advisor Relations, go-to-market functions, sales, strategy, marketing, and market/competitive intelligence teams.

read moreread less