Gone are the days of paper signs and delays in getting updated information out to travellers. We live in a real-time world and travellers expect real-time, relevant information at their fingertips. Digital communications in transportation facilities, using devices like digital signs and interactive kiosks, can enhance passenger experience. They help people get to where they need to go safely, efficiently, and effectively. 

Equipping your passengers with the right information, at the right time ensures a positive experience. This is critical in an environment that demands time sensitive information.

Digital communications in transportation can:

• Alleviate perceived wait times
• Enhance travel experiences
• Engage passengers with news, weather, emergency broadcasts
• Deliver real-time location-based information, such as arrival/departure times, cancellations and delays, or service stoppage
• Improve operations by reducing the workload of employees
• Keep passengers safe; emergency notifications can interrupt regularly scheduled content
• Be a “travel guide” through interactive wayfinding kiosks

Wayfinding has evolved over the last couple of decades from static paper signage to electronic wayfinding to interactive wayfinding. This is largely the result of new technologies becoming available for airports, stations and terminals to leverage. One technology that has had a significant impact is digital signage. With digital signs transportation organizations can quickly and easily update signage.  This provides travellers with more accurate information on arrival/departure times, cancellations, delays and gate changes. Digital signage has also led to significant improvements in wayfinding in facilities like airports, where there are multiple terminals and large volumes of people that need to be moved through the space quickly.

In airports wayfinding encompasses a number of areas including moving travellers between terminals, to gates, through security, and to restaurants and shops. These same screens are often also used to for advertising and to provide news and weather updates.

Interactive wayfinding takes traditional wayfinding to an entirely new level of self-service by integrating technologies like touchscreens, RFID, and barcode scanners.  This allows travellers to independently select a destination from a map or list and the system creates a map to the end point factoring things such as multiple floors, multiple regions, and multiple buildings. Additionally, some software solutions use conditional formatting and are able to react to things such as elevator operation times, making the system choose an appropriate route based on current conditions.

Read our Columbus International Airport, San Francisco International Airport and Vancouver International Airport case studies to learn how those organizations are leveraging digital communications.