Airport Business - 35

COVER STORY
Host2Coast allows travelers to
order from HMSHost restaurants
across the U.S.
HMSHOST

connect with the outside world.
"In the aviation space, there's all
kinds of spaces available, but a large
amount of spaces really don't provide
privacy," Jeremy Jennings, co-founder
and co-CEO said. "As aviation is starting
to look more like hospitality and they're
thinking about the passenger experience,
innovation, amenity and trying to
provide that hospitality experience, we're
part of that solution."
Jabbrrbox uses a 10-inch Elo
touchscreen for the exterior and 24-inch
inside. The touchscreens provide a
consumer-friendly experience, similar to
interacting with their personal devices.
The screens are built to last in hightraffic environments where the devices
are unattended.
Jennings said the boxes democratize
the lounge experience because everyone
can reach them and get in. Anyone with
a credit card can enter the space.
The boxes have rolled out in smaller
deployments with the units clustered
together. As demand grows, they're able
to add more units.
"It's going into the terminal
conditioning the consumer to understand
this is something available, so we will
grow as demand grows," Jennings said.
Having a private lounge also offers
more opportunities for smaller or regional
airports to enhance their passenger
experience, especially if they have a larger
amount of business travelers coming
through their terminal.
"Often times, they have no lounges
or independent lounges," Hackathorn
said. "If you look across the average of
all airports, you're looking at a 50 percent
business travelers to 50 percent leisure
traveler, so if you start looking at the
smaller regional airports and realizing
that half of the people f lying through
every day are business travelers and there's
not a lounge, they still need a place to go."

Jabbrrbox allows travelers
to have a self-service private
lounge experience by giving
them a quiet place to work in
the terminal.

Grab's kiosks at Dallas Fort
Worth International Airport
allows passengers to find
more options for food without
having to physically see the
restaurant location.

JABBRRBOX

GRAB

Expect more changes to
self-service
Mobile options can also make self-service
options more appealing for smaller
airports. Naqvi said if you can provide
the same experience between a larger
airport and smaller one by using the same
technology between each area.
Naqvi said she expects mobile
ordering to grow and sees kiosks as a
temporary solution.
"People are going to go to their mobile
devices. They want to use their own
devices to engage with us, therefore, the
form factors of the kiosks we're deploying
is with that future in mind," she said. "It's
a more plug-and-play environment so we
can quickly scale if that curve hits us faster
than expected where customers transition
to their own mobile devices
As self-service grows, it may
change how airports think about their
concessions programs altogether. Livney
said it could be possible to have food
offerings not visible to travelers on the
concourse by having them developed in
a centralized kitchen area and delivered
to passengers.
"Say you're in an airport and about to
board a flight to inland China and you
know that 70 percent of the people on

the f light are from India and the only
restaurant around that gate is a sushi
restaurant that they may not want," he
said. "We can offer virtual concepts, have
you order from a variety of restaurants
that are not physically available in the
terminal, but you can digitally see them,
browse in your language and have the
ability to transmit the order to an existing
restaurant or commissary that may be
below ground or less valuable real estate
and then have the order brought to you at
the gate or or pickup at another restaurant
or automatic locker.
"There's a lot of potential like that and
we've got several airport partners looking
at use cases like that and by looking at the
flight information systems and airline data
we can dynamically tailor what we offer."
Grab is working with a partner on a
concept at Denver International Airport
that will change every six months. Livney
said it will be powered digitally, so
signage and ordering will go through the
self-service panels, so they try new things.
"Poke bowls are huge right now, but
will they last 10 years? Or be a fad? We
don't know," he said. "Investing in that
space for that long can be challenging
from a concessionaire standpoint." 

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019 \ AVIATIONPROS.COM / 35
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Airport Business

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