Travel✦ Innovation

Airport Industry

AI and augmented reality concept for the connected airport traveller — AR smart glasses, real-time wayfinding, proactive notifications, and a fully mapped end-to-end passenger journey. Presented to four major European airports.

Duration

3.5m

Team

Scale

Enterprise

Scope

Europe

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Overview

This was one of the most ambitious innovation concepts in the portfolio — a comprehensive vision for the "Connected Customer" airport experience, combining AI-powered personalisation with augmented reality smart glasses to transform every touchpoint of the passenger journey. The concept was presented to four major European airports, all of whom responded with genuine enthusiasm for the vision.

The initiative went far beyond traditional UX — it reimagined the airport as an intelligent, responsive environment where AR glasses guide travellers through terminals, proactively alert them to gate changes while they enjoy coffee, surface personalised retail offers, and provide a real-time travel dashboard in the lounge. Every interaction was mapped across a complete end-to-end journey, from pre-travel planning at home through to boarding.

Challenge

Airport experiences were fragmented and inconsistent — passengers navigated disconnected systems for check-in, security, retail, food, and boarding with no unified thread.

Rising expectations for personalised, mobile-first services clashed with the operational complexity of managing millions of passengers through legacy infrastructure.

Airports were missing significant ancillary revenue opportunities because cross-sell and upsell moments weren't contextually triggered at the right time and place in the journey.

Wayfinding in large terminals remained a major stress point, particularly for infrequent travellers or those at unfamiliar airports.

Research & Discovery

Mapped the complete connected customer journey across two phases: Pre-Travel Planning (awareness, app download, booking, upgrades, confirmations) and Day of Travel (departure prep, terminal navigation, services, lounge, retail, boarding).

Developed the Julie persona — a 35-year-old frequent business traveller — to ground every design decision in real behaviour and expectations.

Researched emerging AR hardware and software platforms to validate that smart glasses could deliver the overlay experiences in real terminal environments.

Benchmarked against innovation programmes at airports worldwide to position the concept ahead of the curve.

Solution & Deliverables

Smart glasses project directional arrows on the terminal floor, guiding passengers to their destination — coffee shops, gates, lounges — with distance and time estimates floating in their field of view.

Gate changes, boarding alerts, and delay updates appear as AR overlays wherever the traveller is — no need to check screens or phones. The AI assistant surfaces what matters, when it matters.

In the airport lounge, AR glasses transform into a personal travel command centre — flight status, boarding countdown, loyalty points, and AI-curated suggestions all visible at a glance.

The full vision shows a business traveller moving through the terminal with confidence, guided by AR navigation that other passengers don't have — the connected customer of the future.

Two comprehensive customer journey maps covering the complete passenger experience — from brand awareness and app download through to boarding the aircraft.

Results & Impact

Presented to four major European airports — all four responded with strong interest and enthusiasm for the connected customer vision.

The concept proved prescient: within years, Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest, and smart glasses from multiple manufacturers would begin delivering exactly this type of spatial computing experience.

The work demonstrated that the technology gap was closing rapidly and that airports needed to begin planning for AR-powered passenger experiences.

The timing was ahead of the market — the concept was too early for production deployment, but it planted seeds with airport innovation teams that continue to bear fruit as AR hardware matures.