Newcastle Airport is continuing the drive towards its ambition to become the “most welcoming airport in the UK”. It is a goal reflected in each of the improvements to service and modernisations to facilities that are being made across the gateway to the North East – the most significant of which being the complete reshaping of its airside experience through the redevelopment of its departure lounge. More than £14 million (€18.3m) has been invested in the transformation of the departures area which, when it is completed in late August, will see the addition of a vast array of new shops, restaurants, cafés and bars – all capitalising on the rich resources and iconic culture of the North East of England.
The first phase of Newcastle Airport’s £14 million (€18.3m) departure lounge development saw the opening of The Flying Hippo American-style diner and The Beer House, an authentic ale house inspired by the regional individuality of the North East. The preparatory first phase ensured that Newcastle Airport could still deliver a quality offering for its passengers, and meant that from their completion the other stores in the departures area could be closed for renewal.
The development began close to a year ago, with the first stage of the works – an enabling phase in which unprecedented new F&B concepts were established to diversify the airport’s culinary proposition – completed in April 2014. An enticing offer of unique new eateries included The Flying Hippo American-style diner and The Beer House – created to capture the spirit of the North East with real ales from local brewers and regionally-sourced foods – as well as a refreshed Burger King offer. The open-to-all Aspire Lounge, meanwhile, now offers a premium lounge service in a comfortable, modern environment designed to meet every passenger’s needs. The development of the new facilities ensured that Newcastle Airport could still deliver to its passengers an all-encompassing, quality offer, and meant that from their completion the other stores in the departures area could be closed for renewal in sequence and opened afresh, to enable the creation of something new and original in the departures lounge.
“We really wanted to make sure that we disrupted the actual customer journey as little as possible,” said Gill Caleary, Newcastle Airport’s Commercial Director. “There is a huge amount of work going on, and we’ve done a great job of disguising it with well designed, informative hoardings that guide the customer to where they need to go, but we absolutely didn’t think for one second that we would ever close anything. It’s been a logistical challenge but the customer feedback’s been really positive, and we’re doing everything we can to minimise any disturbances along the way.”
Opened in April of last year, the Aspire Lounge is open to all passengers, and offers a premium lounge service in a comfortable, modern environment designed to meet the needs of every customer.
In September of last year work on the main body of the development began, initiating the construction of new stores for some of the airport’s most widely known and popular brands. A new Travelex bureau de change, jewellery store by sought after North East brand Cuba Lily and the renovated fashion store, traveller, were restored first, alongside Cabin Bar – a premium offering for an elegant dining experience very popular with business customers, opened in partnership with F&B collaborator SSP. “Despite the fact that we’ve been developing the building for the past five months we’ve had continuous trade at all our outlets,” Caleary stressed. In everything we’ve done we’ve traded up to the last possible minute, then opened the new store and closed the old one and taken that back so it can be renovated – then we’re turning all of those old stores into the next phase.”
Though passengers will likely not notice the concealed developments taking place, over the coming months the significant and far-reaching second phase of building works will further strengthen Newcastle Airport’s retail and commercial offering, beginning with new F&B concept, the inherently North Eastern Bar 11, opening in March. The landmark new walkthrough World Duty Free store meanwhile will open at the end of April with a slightly larger footprint than the existing outlet, but with far greater wall footage, meaning a dramatically increased product range will be offered to its customers. Once the new shop is opened its current space we be remodelled to make way for the implementation of two F&B concepts, two more shops and a spa to conclude the departures-wide overhaul of the airport’s passenger services when the year’s construction works are completed in August. “Our passengers’ holidays start here at the airport,” said the airport’s Chief Executive Dave Laws, “so it’s very important to us that we give them the best possible experience.”
Gill Caleary, Newcastle Airport¹s Commercial Director; Lucy Knowles, Chief Marketing Officer, SSP; Dave Laws, Newcastle Airport Chief Executive; and Dean Ward, Commercial Manager, Newcastle Airport at The Beer House.
In addition to the airport’s diverse new portfolio of facilities, its customers will benefit from an improved sense of flow as they pass through the curved walkways, seating areas and streamlined shop fronts of the new departure lounge. “We are confident that the new layout will be more intuitive and will help passengers to make a more informed choice on where they shop, eat, drink or simply relax before their flight,” furthered Laws. “The departure lounge will have a modern and vibrant shopping centre feel – something that we know from feedback is what our customers want. We are meeting the needs of the modern traveller with excellent facilities and there will be plenty on offer for families, couples, groups and business travellers alike.”
Capturing the spirit of the North East
“Both The Flying Hippo and The Beer House have been trading beyond our expectations since they opened, and we are delighted!” Caleary asserted. “We’ve been delighted with the response from the customers – particularly at The Beer House – the North East travelling public do like a good pint, and SSP have got that offer absolutely spot on for our customer.” Establishing a sense of place that irrefutably communicated the characteristics of the North East has been a vital part of its departure lounge developments, and all that makes the region in which the airport is situated unique is reflected in elements of design and style, and within the airport’s product offering.
Newcastle Airport¹s Chief Executive Dave Laws samples beer from the local Tyne Bank Brewery, one of the many real ales on tap at The Beer House. The restaurant, designed to capture the spirit of the North East, opened alongside the American-style Flying Hippo diner and Aspire Lounge in the first phase of the development in April.
“The North East known for its outstanding natural beauty – its countryside and coastlines – and also for the amazing, warm, friendly, fun-loving people there,” Caleary said. “So we thought, how do we bring that alive within the airport? How do we bring that fantastic culture of the North East into a physical building?” As she pioneered the development of the departure lounge it was of great importance to Caleary and her team that the spirit of the North East be present throughout the airport in a way that was authentic, and didn’t seem staged or contrived to its loyal, local customers. Instead, subtle references to the airport’s locality have been made in many different aspects of its commercial offer, which come together to tell the North East’s story. The area’s famed countryside and coastline has become the airport’s larder – conspicuous in the wealth of local produce especially sourced from within the region, while the spirit of the North East’s people is evident in the way the airport has worked with its partners to put the right people in the right place at the right time.
“We’ve worked with SSP to make sure that they’ve sourced local ingredients. Most of the meat for The Flying Hippo and The Beer House – a smokehouse and an alehouse – comes from local farms, so we know exactly where the meat has come from,” Caleary described. “The butcher comes in and does staff training, so that helps with customer engagement. We’ve used local artisan bakers in places like The Cabin, while The Beer House has a selection of local ales that are brewed just a few miles from the airport.”
Like many of the eateries in Newcastle Airport’s newly developed lounge, Cabin Bar sources local ingredients and regional specialities from around the North East to give passenger a flavour of the area’s rich culinary heritage.
The aesthetics and design of each new F&B concept also provided ample opportunity to highlight the distinct qualities of the North East of the country, with the industrial lineage of the region communicated through references to the print works and the Tyne Bridge in The Beer House. The soon-to-open Bar 11 meanwhile takes the area’s heritage and culture wholly as its inspiration; its entire offer centered around 11 great aspects of the North East.
“Newcastle Airport is very much at the heart of the region,” Laws said. “Our strap line is ‘Your Airport’, so we’re reaching out to the North East to say, look, it really is your airport. We’ve studied the customer experience for the travelling public, and in addition to the things that we’ve done in terms of operations and processes, we’ve looked very carefully at the departure lounge and what offers people would like to see – as well as how we can bring local suppliers into the mix to put something back into the region.”
On the way, not in the way
Another key consideration for Caleary was that the development should bring changes to the departure lounge area that would make the airport journey as seamless as possible for the passenger, and like the references to the airport’s region these too would be significant but unobtrusive improvements beneath the surface that will transform the passenger experience at Newcastle International Airport. Digital wayfinding solutions that can guide passengers in varying languages – including Mandarin for the large number of Chinese travellers that pass through the airport, can be adapted to fit the incoming services at a particular time of day; improved FID screens are now much more accessible and meet the needs of visually impaired customers; queue management systems mean that waiting times for passengers are dramatically reduced, and the implementation of 45 minutes of free WiFi enables them to always have access to the information that they need.
“We know that when customers are travelling – regardless of whether it’s business or leisure – there is an element of anxiety and stress, no matter how many times they do their journey. And we know that quite a lot of our customers only travel maybe for their two week holiday in the summer or maybe for a week in the year, so they forget what it was like last time they were here.” Caleary explained. “There is an element of ‘I’m coming to the airport, I feel quite anxious’ when travelling, and whilst we can’t take away all of those fears and anxieties we are trying to relax them by giving them as much information as we can throughout their journey. So it’s not in the way, it’s on the way.”
The development comes at an exciting time for Newcastle Airport. 2015 is the gateway’s 80th year of operation and in the coming months a number of new destinations will be served from the airport, including Stansted from late March on Flybe’s new service, Geneva, being served by easyJet from June, and the vital new United Airlines connection to New York Newark Airport, which will link Newcastle’s passengers to more than 300 airports across the US, the Caribbean and the Americas. As choice improves for passengers across the airport’s route network, the revitalisation of its facilities and services will reflect the diversity and potential of the gateway in its landside offering. “I think it’s really important that any airport knows who its customers are, and that an airport thinks of its customers as customers and not just as passengers. It’s about taking that mentality of processing a passenger back to serving a customer,” Caleary said. “And whilst I mean getting to know who your customers are, I don’t mean getting tangled up in masses of statistics and data. I think it’s about watching the people, looking at who’s coming through your airport, and looking at what time of day they’re coming through, what is the seasonality of their particular route. Who are they, where are they coming from and why are they coming here? And if you can broadly understand that, I think you can get your offer just right.”
Learn more about the revolutionary commercial developments taking place at Europe’s airports and what the future of airport retail will look like at the 24th ACI EUROPE Airport Commercial & Retail Conference & Exhibition, taking place in Milan on 21-23 April 2015.
