As the Head of Innovation Management at Munich Airport, Sarah Wittlieb is responsible for ensuring that the German hub is on top of the latest technologies and trends, and for delivering solutions that can positively impact the customer experience. From leveraging mobility to empower passengers with real-time information, to helping to increase revenues in duty free and travel retail stores, the Innovation Management team"™s work brushes a variety of touch-points both within and outside of the airport terminal.
"We are co-creating new products, services and processes together with our customers, B2B partners and start-up companies," Wittlieb explained to FTE. The goals are multi-faceted, she stated. "Of course, we want to earn revenue as it"™s also about business development for the company, but at the same, with every project we try to create something really unique and new for the customer experience."
The innovation strategy, internally labelled "Strategy 2020", has a broad area of focus. "Our main action field is new mobility, everything connected to what the mobility of tomorrow will look like," Wittlieb said. "The second point is retail and F&B "“ Munich Airport runs 70% of its own retail and restaurants, so we"™re really interested in looking at how we can deal with new trends like e-commerce, and how we can further develop our retail business. Then the third one is about the customer and passenger processes."
"˜Digitalisation and innovation are not the same thing"™
It would be easy to assume that Wittlieb and her Innovation Management colleagues focus solely on using the latest technologies to bring about improvements, but this is not necessarily the case. "For me, there are some people who are saying digitalisation and innovation are the same thing. They"™re not," she said. "Digitalisation is only one part of innovation; there are several other mega trends we are looking at. It"™s not only a question of digitalisation "“ it"™s a combination of digitalisation, and online and offline."
One example of offline innovation can be found in the ongoing trial of the use of sound to improve the experience across Munich Airport. "This is not just about playing music from the charts," Wittlieb stated. The airport is working with a third party, which conducted a three-day audit across the airport to track the sounds and noises in different parts of the terminal. Following this, bespoke music was composed and the soundtracks are now being trialled to gauge what impact they have.
"In one place they said "turn the music down there because at that touch-point it"™s distracting". In another place, you can relax the customers with music, or even attract them in such a way that they might spend more money in the duty free shop," Wittlieb continued. Close attention is being paid to the effects this has in different areas "“ from shops to car parks to restrooms "“ before a decision is made on whether to pursue the project further…
