Business travellers lead airport passenger traffic recovery

The Civil Aviation Ministry’s decision announced on September 2 to increase India’s domestic flight operations from 45% to 60% with immediate effect bodes well for the airport media operators in the country whose business had been significantly impacted when all flight operations were suspended in the wake of the national lockdown enforced in the collective fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. By May 25, domestic flight operations resumed partially.

Against this backdrop, Moving Walls and Media4Growth undertook a comparative study of the audience movement at four key airports in the country – Terminal 3, Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi; Terminal 2, Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai; Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru; and Sardar Vallabhbhai International Airport, Ahmedabad – to ascertain the vantage advertising locations in the current circumstances.

The analysis was conducted on the basis of the data seen on the Moving Audiences Decisions (MAD) platform, for the periods July 1, 2020 - July 20 2020 and August 1, 2020 and August 20, 2020. Pertinent to note that MAD’s Location Intelligence powers planning and reporting for marketers and advertisers across South and South East Asia.

The data sources for the analysis being: social (Instagram, Twitter data), GPS (device movement data from MAD’s data aggregators), video (camera), traffic (Google Traffic Data), LAMPS (Location Audience Measurement Platform which is an IoT device capturing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth transmitters).

Key learnings

The share of voice data shows that the Reach at the four airport terminals (Mumbai Airport T2, Delhi Airport T3, Domestic Terminal at Ahmedabad and Bangalore Airport terminal) covered in the study was significantly lower than the potential views. Now, as the Civil Aviation Ministry increases the flight operations, the Reach at the 4 airport terminals could significantly go up from the month of September.

Fig 1: Potential views vs reach

A sectional analysis of the audience reach at the four terminals for the month of July 1 – July 20, 2020 shows that the Baggage Reclaim area commanded a comparatively higher audience reach at the IGIA T3, compared to the three other airport terminals, while the Check-in area recorded the highest audience reach at the Bangalore airport terminal.

Fig 2: Sectional analysis of audience reach at the four airport terminals in the period July 1 – 20, 2020

In terms of audience profile, the data clearly shows that business travelers outnumbered other audience segments, as seen in Figure 4.

Fig 3: Audience Segmentation

Commenting on the airport audience data, Srikanth Ramachandran, Founder & Group CEO of Moving Walls said: “As the famous statement goes, some people see the glass half full and others see it half empty. Our analysis shows that passenger traffic at airports, though lower than the peak periods, are growing post lockdown. We believe that adverse situations like this provide an opportunity for a smart advertiser, armed with this near real-time data, to run short term data-driven programmatic campaigns extracting the best value. There is also a short term opportunity to maximise the share of voice for the brand and influence the subconscious minds of these travellers”.

Looking ahead, as the Government unlocks all business sectors, and traffic movement between cities pick up, airport passenger traffic will likely increase at a rapid pace, providing the much needed impetus for airport media business across the country, especially in the current festive season.