Airports are malls with inconvenient entrances

Non-aeronautical revenue accounts for more than half of total revenue at many of the world’s leading airports.

In New Zealand, property and retail are fundamental to airport earnings, particularly as aeronautical revenue remains under pressure. Passenger-volume growth alone is no longer a sufficient commercial strategy.

Billy Tucker will make the case that airports already hold one of retail’s most valuable assets: an audience with time to fill.

Drawing on Beonic’s work with major airports and some of the world’s largest shopping-centre operators, Billy will translate the mall operating model for airports. He will examine what transfers directly, what requires adaptation, and what the data reveals about the revenue impacts of processing friction, gate-hugging passengers and underperforming tenancies.

Delegates will leave with five practical ways to increase non-aeronautical revenue per passenger.

Speaker:
Billy Tucker, Chief Executive Officer, Beonic

The future of retail and hospitality in the airport network

This panel will pick up the conversation, bringing together operators and leaders to canvass where best practice is heading for airports of all sizes.

What will be the future expectations of global travellers as they arrive in New Zealand airports?

How do our smaller airports optimise a modest retail footprint in a way that stays authentic to place?

Panellists will explore how airports are building more direct relationships with consumers, what AI and data can (and can’t) tell you about what a passenger actually wants, and how hospitality and cultural authenticity shape the way people actually use – and spend in – their terminal. You’ll be able to think about where retail and hospitality models are heading and where your operation, large or small, fits on that trajectory.

Panel to be announced

Airports as economic multipliers and tourism gateways

Air connectivity is a primary driver of tourism, and tourism is a major contributor to regional economies.

For many New Zealand airports and their communities, that connection has weakened through airline network retrenchment, reduced regional frequency and continued volatility in international markets.

Drawing on 35 years of airline and airport experience, Simon Russell will examine how airports, government agencies and tourism organisations can build more aligned strategies to convert improved air services into measurable economic outcomes.

The session will combine data-led analysis with examples from Australasia and the Pacific, including:

• How airlines evaluate market demand
• What government agencies need to understand about aviation’s contribution to GDP
• How airports and tourism organisations can work together
• Opportunities created by new aircraft and changing airline networks

The presentation will be followed by a panel discussion.

Speaker:
Simon Russell, Chief Executive Officer, Eagle Aviation Consulting

Mapping the terminal of tomorrow – a tech stocktake

Screening, check-in, baggage handling and biometrics are all evolving quickly. For airports building long-term master plans today, the challenge is understanding how these moving parts will fit together, what sequencing makes sense, and what needs to be true – operationally, commercially and regulatory – before an airport can actually capture the benefit.

This session maps the landscape in one place. What’s mature and deployable now, what’s genuinely close, and what remains further out despite the hype. It looks at how technologies interact – where biometric identity, for instance, will change the calculus for terminal footprint or baggage flow, not just queue times – and what that means for the variables airports should be weighing into master plans today, rather than designing around yesterday’s constraints.

Speakers and panel to be announced