SITA published its latest 2022 Passenger IT Insights research, which highlights strong pent-up demand for both business and leisure travel emerging from the pandemic, with passengers further embracing mobile and touchless technologies to make the journey as convenient and seamless as possible.
The SITA survey reveals an increase in passenger use of mobile devices for booking, on board the airplane, and for bag collection in Q1 2022 compared to Q1 2020, while automated gates saw increases in adoption for identity control, boarding, and border control.
But SITA noted the accelerated digitalization of air travel since the pandemic still hasn’t completely ended the health verification challenges, which represents a pain point that has slowed end-to-end automation.
In Q1 2020, more than half of passengers were still doing their own research on health verification requirements and manually submitting documentation. Uncertainty about health requirements and travel rules has likely led travelers to seek more staff interaction when starting the journey.
The survey found more than 86 percent of passengers have positive emotions about identity control, and that 84 percent of passengers are positive about bag handling technology, with half of passengers now receiving real-time information at bag collection via smartphone until delivery.
SITA reported passengers intend to fly more from 2023 onwards than they did prior to the pandemic, anticipating averages of 2.93 flights per passenger per year for business, and 3.90 for leisure. When weighing up whether to fly or not, the main barriers are ticket prices, health risks, and geopolitical risks, the respondents reported.
“It is exciting to see demand recovering and even surpassing pre-pandemic levels, not just for leisure but also for business travel,” said David Lavorel, CEO of SITA in announcing the latest survey. “We are seeing that the technology-driven end-to-end passenger journey is becoming a reality, as the air transport community continues to digitalize its travel processes and industry operations, accelerated by the pandemic. The use of IT to help drive and sustain the recovery of air travel is vital today, and it is also critical to the post-pandemic digital journey of tomorrow.”
