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ASIA-PACIFIC AIRPORTS MAGAZINE
COMMERCIAL REVENUES
In the shop window Paccaya Resources CEO, Andrew Ford, talks to ACI Asia-Pacific’s head of communications and events, Jeannie Wong, about the challenges of resuscitating commercial revenues at airports.
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t goes without saying the COVID-19 pandemic has crippled the global economy and devastated the aviation sector at large. With the sector trying hard to restart and recover from the pandemic, companies are faced with a multitude of decisions on how best to resuscitate and resume commercial activities. Paccaya’s Andrew Ford agrees with ACI’s anticipation that aviation's recovery will be gradual and in phases as passenger traffic returns to airports across the region. In fact, the latest projections indicate it will take four to seven years to recover to 2019 levels. In the face of this sobering reality, how can airports ramp-up operations and business activities in order to protect and, eventually, revert to growing commercial revenues?
APA Issue 3, 2020
Ford opined that airports will need to resize and reshape their commercial businesses, but in the immediate term must address these key areas: 1. Health & Safety – Re-assure passengers that the airport is a safe environment to enter 2. Foster evolving programmes as passenger numbers increase – bring passengers to the airport 3. Business maximisation of the current commercial platform 4. Digitisation of airport commercial businesses (both front and back-of-house) 5. Longer-term resizing and reshaping of the business. Obviously, for the area of health and safety, airports are to a certain degree,
