Developing a content strategy first is the key to creating efficient, passenger-focused airport experiences. By prioritizing content, airports can enhance communication, streamline operations, and build stronger connections with travelers.
Every year, airports and partners flock to FTE Global, the “CES of Aviation,” to explore groundbreaking strategies to enhance passenger experience and airport operations.
This year, Synect led a group of industry leaders and innovators in a standing-room-only talk on how content-first strategy can optimize passenger experience and behavior, guide IT strategy, streamline operations, and drive revenue.
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| A rockstar panel at FTE Global 2024. Image: Synect |
Many thanks to our panelists who shared their experiences and expertise:
- Royce Holden, cybersecurity lead/CISO at Mead & Hunt (Moderator).
- Yahav Ran, CEO of Synect.
- Mike Youngs, VP of information technology at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
- Faith Varwig, principal at Faith Group.
- Rob Bischoff, global digital experience design leader at Gensler.
- Austin Gould, President of Gould Strategic Solution.
The importance of a content-first strategy
Titled “Upgrading from Traditional FIDS and Legacy Digital Signage? Why Content Strategy is Vital when It’s Time to Invest in a Digital Ecosystem,” this talk let our expert panel share their unique insight on this new approach. If you’d rather watch than read, sign up here to see the video as soon as we release it.
Our CEO opened the panel by defining content strategy and its importance:
“The essence of content strategy is the ability to affect the behavior of the viewers, finding a way to direct them into something that enables a positive outcome for both the viewer and the airport itself. If we communicate at the right time, at the right moment, at the right context … we can drive positive outcomes.”
Dynamic digital communication lets airports deliver the right content in the right context, which helps passengers make quick decisions as they navigate the airport.
They make it through security lines quickly. They find their gates efficiently, and they board their flights on time. As panelist Mike Youngs said, “they’re not going to be frustrated. They’re going to spend money on concessions.” Data backs this up—ACI reports that “every 1% increase in the global passenger satisfaction mean generates an additional 1.5% in non-aeronautical revenue.” Better communication benefits everyone.
How do airports develop a content-first strategy?
Yahav detailed Synect’s process for developing a content-first strategy:
- Passenger needs: What do we need to solve?
- Stakeholder needs: What is essential for airport stakeholders? What functionality is required for them to communicate and operate?
- Physical environment analysis: Can we get the passenger’s attention at the right moments?
- Content strategy: How will we communicate it all at the right times in the passenger journey?
- Gap analysis: What’s missing for us to communicate as planned?
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| Synect’s approach to content strategy development. Image: Synect |
Yahav also shared how content-first strategy serves as a framework that unites all stakeholders, ensuring alignment from the start, enabling smart investments, and maximizing the effectiveness of passenger communication.
The role of system and infrastructure
DFW’s Mike Youngs shared how content strategy facilitates good IT strategy, highlighting his passion for FIDS, airport branding, and the customer journey. Talking about the impact of content-first strategy on DFW’s international traveler experience, Young said: “Content strategy serves your passengers, improves your operations, but it also has the opportunity to create an identity — a soul — a brand for your airport.”
He shared how DFW realized it had an opportunity to streamline operations, benefit passengers, and boost revenue by focusing on the international passenger experience.
“We’re a big connector airport … so there’s a lot of different levels[and] key decision points. We’re trying to reduce traveler confusion. There’s an opportunity to enhance the wayfinding so folks don’t miss their flight. If they don’t miss their flight, they’re not going to be frustrated. They’re going to spend money on concessions.”
This became an area of focus for DFW and Synect. To better understand their international passengers’ needs, the team mapped the journey and identified the most painful problems.
In their gap analysis, the team recognized the need for visual, multilingual wayfinding that enabled passengers to glance and go.
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| DFW’s legacy international passenger journey. Image: Synect |
With these goals, DFW and Synect extended the content strategy and Passenger360 system implemented at the Gate of Tomorrow, introducing dynamic, multilingual wayfinding for international passengers. The language updates are based on incoming flights’ country of origin, which gives global travelers a warm, helpful welcome and relieves stress in areas where passenger anxiety typically spikes, like security and CBP. Ultimately, the new multilingual wayfinding solution resulted in less frustration, fewer missed flights, and more opportunities to enjoy concessions and other airport offerings.
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| DFW and Synect’s Multilingual Signage. Image: Synect |
The consequences of delaying content discussions
As Faith Varwig shared, delaying content strategy conversations puts airports at risk of over-investing in display hardware that will not meet their communication goals or passengers’ needs, noting that digital displays are one of the most expensive investments airports make during renovations.
Proactively defining content strategy provides an organizational north star, ensuring that all decisions and investments are made with the passenger’s experience of the content in mind.
As the founder of a full-service engineering, consulting, and professional services firm, Varwig has enabled content-first strategy and seen its benefits up close — and she knows the risks of delaying content strategy:
“[The industry does] everything backwards today. [Airports] select and put up a whole bunch of digital displays and make tens of millions of dollars of investment in digital displays across the terminal project,” Varwig said. “Without thinking about what data we need where, you can make a lot of big mistakes with the most expensive part of the job and you get stuck with an environment because you didn’t think about the program all the way up front.”
Benefits of prioritizing content strategy
Prioritizing content-first strategy allows airports to build an ecosystem that enhances the passenger experience. Gensler’s Rob Bischoff described how airports have taken cues from other industries, such as retail, to develop content that shapes traveler experiences.
“All our customers are omnichannel … this is true of every industry we go in,” Bischoff said. “They’re on their phone, they’re on their laptop, they’re checked in in different places.”
Bischoff spoke of his experience evaluating airport passenger types and their needs across the customer journey. By mapping passengers’ journeys, stakeholders can find new ways to meet the evolving needs of each passenger type. Families navigating security for the first time have much different content needs than frequent fliers strolling through the concourse, as Bischoff described during the panel.
“The traveling mom with two kids that are pulling at our security versus the person like you and all of us who travel every week, or every month, is really different,” Bischoff said. “We have to understand the user and then deliver that information at different time.”
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| SFO’s Principles of R.E.A.C.H. shown in the presentation, with passenger wants are described on the left, and their path through the airport is described on the right. Image: Synect |
Building a content-first strategy that’s tailored to the space and the passenger type unlocks layered benefits for airports, including:
- Efficient content deployment: Creating content once and deploying it across multiple in-airport displays and partner platforms reduces production costs and ensures consistent messaging.
- Unified airport branding: Cohesive content establishes a strong, recognizable identity for the airport, fostering trust and familiarity among passengers.
- Enhanced passenger engagement: Familiarity with the airport’s identity helps passengers quickly understand and respond to new content, reducing decision-making time during their journey.
- Real-time navigation support: Dynamic digital displays deliver timely, context-specific information at key points in the passenger journey, enabling seamless navigation and reducing confusion.
- Reduced travel stress: Clear, actionable communication decreases passenger anxiety, improving their overall experience while encouraging smoother, more efficient movement through the airport.
- Streamlined operations: Improved passenger flow and reduced confusion lead to greater operational efficiency, allowing staff to focus on critical tasks.
- Strategic influence on passenger behavior: Airports and stakeholders gain a platform to guide passenger behavior proactively, optimizing their journey and driving positive outcomes such as increased concession spending and on-time departures.
Putting it all together to enhance operations and increase responsiveness
As passenger volumes continue to rise, airports face new pressures to maintain security and efficiency without expanding physically. Total US passenger volume is projected to reach nearly 1 billion passengers in 2025.
Austin Gould, President of Gould Strategic Solution and former TSA Assistant Administrator at RCA, outlined how content-first strategy helps airports manage rising passenger traffic.
“Airports aren’t getting bigger,” Gould said. “Yet passenger volumes are going up anywhere from 3-to-5% a year. The only way to get more people through is to do it more effectively, and having passengers that understand what the expectation is, understand what the rules are, understand where to go, what line to get in, it is critically important, and it’s only going to get more important.”
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| A slide from the presentation showing ABE’s revamped security checkpoint with screening reminders and data. Image: Synect |
Effective communication, supported by a robust content-first strategy, is central to guiding passengers through complex airport environments. Gould emphasized the importance of communicating with passengers “early and often” to set clear expectations at critical points like security. He shared examples of how TSA and airports have partnered with Synect to enhance their communication with travelers, including:
- Dynamic messaging: Digital content can deliver just-in-time updates on queue procedures, divestment, and recomposure, allowing airports to adjust PreCheck lanes or other configurations without moving physical barriers.
- Multilingual capabilities: Communicating in passengers’ native languages reduces confusion, especially in international terminals.
- Real-time emergency alerts: Digital systems enable rapid responses to unexpected events, such as storms, ensuring safety and maintaining order.
Gould also stressed that a good content strategy benefits security.
“Confusion in the checkpoint is not good,” Gould Said. “You get people at their worst time. They’re going to miss their flight. They’re juggling stuff. They’re spilling their Starbucks. You’ve got to streamline all this to get people through the checkpoints more effectively. Airports want people through the checkpoints quickly and efficiently because then they’re happier when they’re getting onboard the planes.”
An effective content strategy offers many benefits for passengers, security teams, airport operators, and airlines alike.
Start where you are and build to scale
As the talk concluded, Young broke it down for the CIOs and technical stakeholders.
“A good content strategy is a good IT strategy,” he said. “It’s more cost effective to have a coherent enterprise content strategy so that you’re not putting as many displays out there. You’re reducing costs. You’re not supporting multiple systems. It just makes good sense from an IT strategy perspective as well.”
Young shared his passion for FIDS and how DFW and Synect tackled the challenge of modernizing their system while keeping it cost-effective. Highlighting the old design’s inefficiencies, he explained their goal to make it easier for passengers to find flights, reduce viewing time, and give the displays a modern, app-inspired look that aligns with passenger expectations. By reusing existing infrastructure and focusing on visual hierarchy, the team created a more intuitive and visually appealing design, transforming the traditional “spreadsheet-style” displays into a centerpiece for the airport. Through iterative design and customer feedback, they achieved a solution that effectively communicates just-in-time information while leveraging the capabilities of the Passegner360 content management system.
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| FIDS of the Future at DFW. Image: Synect |
CAPTION: FIDS of the Future at DFW
Implementing FIDS of the Future gave DFW’s passengers more agency over their travel, increasing their confidence in their ability to navigate the airport. As an added benefit, helping passengers answer their questions means DFW staff has more time to focus on operation-critical tasks.
Building a content strategy to shape the future of airports
Developing a content strategy first is the key to creating efficient, passenger-focused airport experiences. By prioritizing content, airports can enhance communication, streamline operations, and build stronger connections with travelers. We’ve seen how this approach delivers measurable benefits for our clients and partners, and we’re eager to help others achieve similar results.
If you missed our panel at FTE Global, you can sign up to see a preview as soon as it’s available.
