12
ASIA-PACIFIC AIRPORTS MAGAZINE
SECTION ACI ASIA-PACIFIC TITLE NEWS
Regional update Communications manager, Samantha Solomon, rounds-up the latest news and developments from ACI Asia-Pacific.
VIRTUAL WBP ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSES ROAD TO RECOVERY ACI Asia-Pacific recently hosted its first virtual roundtable event for the region’s World Business Partners, which provided companies from multiple disciplines with the opportunity to hear first-hand from airport leaders about their perspectives on aviation’s recovery from COVID-19. Executives from Dubai Airports, Kansai Airports and Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport covered a range of topics related to the events that have unfolded and the road to recovery. Reflecting on the past few months, Murali Varadarajan, the former senior vice president of operations for Mumbai International Airport Limited, said: “Communicating with our people, passengers and stakeholders was very important. “Initially there was a lot of confusion, so we constantly updated our website with real-time information. This is how we started to build passenger confidence.” While Kansai Airports’ corporate executive vice president and chief commercial officer APA Issue 4, 2020
non-aeronautical, Stephane Geffroy, explained how he believed digitisation can help operations. “Given the new normal of social distancing, it will be more difficult to accommodate people in our shops,” he said. “We are looking at a queuing management system so that passengers don’t have to queue outside a shop and receive an alert when they can enter.” Offering a final thought at the end of the roundtable, Eugene Barry, executive vice president commercial for Dubai Airports, commented: “We need to accept that many elements of this crisis are out of our hands. “Our industry, especially in this region, has been exposed to so many challenges in the past and we have built up the resilience and experience to deal with external shocks like this. I have no doubt we will emerge from this.” More than 40 World Business Partners and guests from 20 countries attended the roundtable.
