Your Guide To Airport Adventures

Stuck waiting for your plane? Here’s your guide to airport adventures beyond duty free

- Lark Gould

If you think airports are just places to board planes, think again. Airports are places where the average traveler spends 137 minutes per trip lining up, sitting down, pacing, waiting, pacing – and more waiting – to board their planes. However, airports are now becoming destinations in their own right – hubs of shopping, stylish dining, entertainment, exercise, even pampering.

This phenomenon is called “dwell time,” according to Dolby & Holder consulting group, and they estimate passengers are wasting 47 percent of it, resulting in some $6 billion in lost revenues for airports.

Some airports are getting wise to ways of entertaining this captive audience. Certainly brand-focused shopping found this to be a winner long ago, and even while brick and mortar retail sees dark times ahead, airport retail is seeing sunny skies with no clouds in sight.

Micromarket Monitor holds that revenues from US and Canadian airport retailing should rise from about $4.2 billion in 2015 to nearly $10 billion by 2020, marking a compound annual growth rate of nearly 20 percent. Worldwide projections approach $90 billion by 2023, according to Credence Research, especially as more families around the globe join the middle class.

But airports have become much more than alt-malls for travelers. They have turned into destinations in their own right and places to consider for pre-trip fun before flying.

“Airports are a reflection of their community and you see airports really embracing this,” says Angela Gittens, director general of Airports Council International based in Montreal. “Incheon works with the Korean Cultural Institute and offers all sorts of programs. Changi in Singapore is well known for a whole series of passenger items – a movie theater, a butterfly garden, special children’s areas – all really memorable,” Gittens notes.