Airport Business - 21

SEATING MATTERS
not so much thinking about the
selection of the seating early on in the
planning process, but thinking about
the knowing the typologies, the mix
and ratio of those seating typologies
that you want to offer passengers.
There has also been a focus on
more hospitality in the seating inside
a terminal, but airports need to make
special considerations before picking
furniture, such as extreme durability.
"Most hospitality spaces that you
find have high maintenance upkeep,
high turnover, they're willing to
replace their chair over and over and
over again to have that lux factor. No
airport is willing to do that," she said.
"Maintenance and durability were
high on the list for us and what I'd
recommend anybody look at."
Mercer said they negotiated
a 10-year 24/7 warranty with all
manufacturers on the SFO project,
so they had to overly engineer and
consider what product they were going

to give the airport.
The seating also needs to look
inviting, comfortable enough to seat
lots of different body types and also
have enough mechanisms to make it
feel like there's choice, like a slight
swivel.
"You don't need a ton of different
bells and whistles, otherwise it will
break," she said.
Williams said lounge style seating
is a very difficult product to purchase
for airports as it requires much greater
research than traditional gate seating
and attention should be given to
strength and stability.
Most of the traditional international
gate seat suppliers test to a very high
standard and the products pass the tests
for severe contract use which is not the
case with lounge style seating.
"Much attention should be given
to the specifications of finishes and
product durability as the life of these
products will not be the same as

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traditional gate seating and we have
seen products that require replacing
after just a few months," he said
Wyatt said airports should consult
with their carriers when making gate
hold seating updates.
"They have a lot of experience and
can tell you a lot about passenger wants,
needs and habits," he said. "They have
a lot to share about passengers and also
their own process changes that might
be coming that might effect how
passengers approach seating.
He said to also look at the current
trends inside your own terminal to
see wear patterns, what technology
is coming and the adaptability of the
chairs you're buying. Then f ind a
partner in the project who you can
develop a long-term relationship with.
"If we know anything, it's that we're
living in a very fast changing world
here in the airport and aviation world,"
he said. 

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Airport Business

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Airport Business
