Good start, but a long way to go. India's airport commercials are designed around the origin-destination (OD) format of passengers with complex transit rules beyond those from adjoining countries like Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.
Several things need to be considered before trying this stunt.
- MARKET STRUCTURE
- India is itself a massive source of passengers. Unlike the US, domestic transit flights are rare and expensive, meaning that the only options that airlines have are direct flights.
- Most of the inbound flights are of Indians with a smatter of foreign tourists which are a fraction of the net passenger flow between India and the world.
- COMMERCIALIZATION BOTTLENECKS
- We are a huge country with limited surveillance capabilities. Singapore, Netherlands, UAE, etc have small territories and stringent systems in place to monitor people's flows, thereby they have processes in place to ensure that those passengers stopping in their country are only for layover tourism. We cannot afford to do that.
- What incentive do we provide for passengers if they cannot have a 3/4-day stop-and-visit model?
- INFRASTRUCTURE - physical and fiscal
- Indian tax system does not help the cause of duty-free shopping unlike Dubai or Singapore or Hong Kong. Regulations will have to be tweaked to ensure that passengers in transit can buy absolutely duty-free products to their hearts' content - including fancy stuff like electronics, cellphones, etc. so that more airlines are motivated to encourage layover flights through India.
- The physical infrastructure has terminals designed to get passengers from check-in to the boarding gates with limited thoughts on what to do with transit passengers.
- I have transited via Delhi, Hyderabad and a few other airports while being on long tours overseas before and despite the architectural beauty there is nothing for a foreigner to do.
- To have a critical transit passenger base, we need a massive entertainment-f&b zone. That means someone having a 4-to-8-hour layover needs to have things to do. Lounges, movie halls, pubs, kids' entertainment facilities, and lots of shopping options. The top 6 airports in India are not designed for that kind of layover.
The closest airport to smart and efficient commercialization model is Kochi airport. It is small, efficient, and promotes local culture and products like no other Indian airport. But then again, this is only available at the departures since the airport's economics are deisgned for OD markets.
If our airports can combine the fiscal and physical transit architecture of Singapore Changi airport and bring the ingenous promotion strategy of Kochi airport across India, we will be an unstoppable force. If we start this today, it would start bearing results in another 5-8 years.
Hub-and-spoke model has limited business opportunities in India, since we are designed to be either a source market or a destination market.