When traveling through airports, I often notice just how sub-par many airport concessions are for the traveler.  Frequently, the kiosks are full of rather generic items priced at rather extraordinary prices to fit rare needs.  The newsshops are often the most useful but offer rather high prices and, sometimes, impratically packaged food items.  Restaurants of all kinds are often staffed by rather surly people and run by large companies such as ARAmark with not enough attention paid to the standards of the brand. 

Before going further, let’s concede that operating on airport real estate is an expensive proposition.  Let’s also concede that supplying an operation and staffing it for what are often odd retail hours is also a challenge.  In short, let’s be understanding of the need for a higher price for many goods, food and services. 

It’s my observation that what often drivese this sub-par service is the exceptionally lengthy leases and concessions granted by airport management to these businesses.  Once you’ve got your space, you’ve got a very captive audience.  Once you’ve leased all these concessions to one large corporation, you’ve got no real competition either.  This is a real problem at many airports. 

I am an admitted coffee addict and even an admitted Starbucks fan.  I’ve yet to have purchased a Starbucks beverage at an airport that was anywhere close to the product I can get at a regular retail Starbucks store.  The service is almost invariably slow and the training of the service staff is invariably bad.  I’ve even had to tell a so called airport barista what a “dry” cappucino was.  You may not know but in the Starbucks world, this is a basic thing.   And that kind of experience for a beverage costing around $5 is really unacceptable.  I don’t care if I’m standing in an airport or at my local Starbucks:  For $5, I deserve a properly made beverage.

Not all airports are like this.  I have always found Portland International to be a great airport to visit.  I also really enjoy Milwaukee’s airport when I’ve passed through.  Both have the distinction of being willing to reflect their locality with food, retail items and even books.  (It’s notable that both these airports have excellent book stores.)  I honestly don’t know what their concessions contracts and leases are like but since they do have exceptional representation from local businesses, I can only believe they are doing an excellent job of balancing their offerings as well as ensuring some competition.

It’s time to see other, larger airports engage in more competition inside their terminals.  It’s time to see competing newstands, restaurants and  retail shops.  And it’s time to ensure that new competition has an open and transparent opportunity to enter into that marketplace on a more regular basis than every 15 years.

Today, the way many airports seem to operate in this area reminds me of cable companies in many cities.  There is always mediocre to lackluster service until it gets close to the time to renew these contracts.  As these businesses near their renewal, there is a suddenly a fresh burst of service and quality.  When that time comes, there is often a push to retain the incumbent and to do so under cover rather than through an open bid.  The incumbent makes grandiose promises of raising standards in every category and offers what are often large sums of profit sharing to the airport management to ensure their participation in the airport business.  Once the incumbent wins his next 10 to 15 year contract, service plummets again and consumers are faced with more expensive and generic offerings with surly service.

I have no doubt that airports could be offering a much better service product with much more competition between businesses.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to buy an airplane practical meal?  Or to be able to find a USB charger for your cellphone that you forgot to bring?   Are you really going to shop for a $1200 suit while waiting for a flight?

The only way this happens is if your community lets its wishes be known.  An active community voice does drive this process.

Filed under: Airports by ajax