The global travel industry is seeing a huge surge in the number of passengers, fueled by people’s increased hunger for travel post the removal of COVID-19-related restrictions. The surge has been testing the capabilities of the facilities services and innovative measures. In addition, passengers’ behavior and preferences have been rapidly evolving and not adopting these changes will leave the service providers behind.

Passengers now are more sophisticated, tech-savvy, and always connected. As time becomes the most valuable commodity, air travelers not only aim to reduce the time spent at the airport and demand quick service, but also require a variety of other services across the entire duration of travel. The civil aviation industry is currently upgrading their services to not only cater to the evolving set of passenger requirements and expectations but also to improve the efficiencies of the infrastructures, people, and processes. Airports and airlines are either increasing the number of services they are offering or innovating their existing services to be more efficient. Catering to the new age passenger is becoming a reality with the rapid evolution of technologies.

Airlines spend over 6% of their revenue on IT representing about $31bn in absolute spend, while airports spend around similar proportions of their revenue on IT representing about $5bn in total spend. According to the Airports Council International, (ACI) the world’s airports are expected to see nearly $2.4 trillion of investment to develop their infrastructure, including the use of advanced technologies and expansions by 2040. Countries in the Middle East alone will need to spend around $151 billion to complete the expansion and modernization projects for their airports.