ACRP Report 136: Implementing Integrated Self-Service at Airports provides guidelines for considering, evaluating, and making strategic decisions for implementing and optimizing a comprehensive passenger self-service experience for a variety of sizes of U.S. airports and their stakeholders. These guidelines include an inventory of self-service applications and technologies with their respective benefits; establishment of a decision-making roadmap to implement self-service; identification of associated infrastructure and airport/airline/other stakeholder integration requirements of multiple self-service applications; guidance for developing business cases for various stakeholders; determination of operational requirements to include staffing and maintenance; consideration of regulatory requirements and industry standards; identification of potential integrations of other non-passenger self-service applications to facilitate employee and tenant services; and demonstration of how various stakeholder technologies can combine into one cohesive system.
Bound into the report is CRP-CD-168, which provides tools to assist the user in developing an integrated passenger self-service program. The tools include the Business Case Development Guide, the Passenger Self-Service (PSS) Inventory, and the PSS Environment Map.
The commercial aviation industry has and will continue to rapidly adopt self-service models for passenger service functions, but this has been done largely in a case-by-case manner. Examples include remote check-in, baggage tagging and screening, off-site baggage check-in, mobile boarding passes, dynamic way-finding, self-boarding, parking payments, concession advance purchases, border clearance, and baggage tracking. With passenger traffic growing and funding sources shrinking, airports need a coordinated and strategic approach with their stakeholders to implement self-service processes to optimize overall efficiencies and satisfy individualized passenger preferences.
Under ACRP Project 10-17, research was conducted by Barich, Inc., in association with Airport Process Design, Trevor Clark, Carolyn Binder, and Ricondo & Associates, with graphics provided by DaSar Productions. Key contributions were provided through several airport site visits including Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Geneva, Montreal, and Tokyo airports; The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey airports; Orlando International; and Seattle-Tacoma International among others. Several airlines and industry associations also contributed to the research effort.
