Airport Business

MAY 2017

The airport professional's source for airport industry news, articles, events, and careers.

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TECHNOLOGY 28 airportbusiness May 2017 By Steven Schultz Practical Lessons Learned From a Digital Signage Network Overhaul Jacksonville International Airport used a collaborative approach to upgrading signage in its terminal. THE SITUATION The Jacksonville International Airport (JIA) in northeast Florida serves 5.5 million passengers each year. Over the course of time, JIA had acquired three digital media management solu- tions and all three were end of life. Content was "functional," but did not support the JIA brand or enhance the traveler's experience. This was the perfect opportunity to replace all three solutions with a single solution that was robust enough to meet the various needs of different stakeholders and yet friendly enough that technical support as well as business ownership could be handled by JIA personnel. Further, it represented an opportunity for the business to change its processes, gain effi- ciencies and achieve outcomes that were not previously possible with the original solutions. A project of this type had to be approached carefully because it impacted multiple areas. Not only would it affect the ability of pas- sengers to navigate the airport and locate their gate, but the existing signage also featured third-party advertising, so any change would impact advertising revenues, and, if something went wrong it would do so in a very public fash- ion, meaning the traveling public will notice immediately. In today's world of social media, negative information proliferates at the speed of light. So, how best to navigate through a project like this? There are several important factors, the first of which is to ensure that ALL the stakeholders have been engaged. The second challenge is I magine going to the airport to catch a flight for the vacation of your dreams, and find- ing no information about flight schedules or where to go to catch your plane. How quickly excitement would turn to frustra- tion. Indeed, the very business of any air- port is to facilitate passenger movement from the front curb, through security, and onto an aircraft, for which good digital signage is critical.

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