Self-Service Will Soon Be the Standard at International Airports

Self-service kiosks, self-bag drops and self-boarding services are going to appear more frequently at international airports, according to the 2014 SITA/ACI Airport IT Trends Survey.

Almost all of the global airports surveyed in the report outlined plans to invest in this type of technology over the next three years.

By 2017, 86 percent of airports plan to offer self-service check-in, 74 percent of airports plan to introduce self-service bag drop, and 52 percent plan to introduce self-boarding.

One of the increasingly popular aspects of this technology is geo-location, which pushes different services to a passenger based on which part of the airport process they’re in.

The most common example of this is flight status notifications, which 50 percent of airports already offer. Airports also plan to invest more heavily in mobile notifications including way-finding, security wait times, and retail services.