The annual Passenger Terminal EXPO is underway this week in Barcelona. The event provides a powerful international platform for the airport and airline sectors to interact and share common issues, goals and solutions about the airport industry, with a particular and unique focus on the terminal.

Cisco's partner SITA has a very strong presence at the event with various speakers on the industry trends as well as booth and demos. One of these is the iFlow platform which uses Cisco's MSE as a core component.

The Airport industry is one of the most researched industries with very solid and proven metrics and clear ROI measures. Some interesting statistics recently reported include:

Airport IT Investment trends:

• IT spending in Airports has grown by 12% CAGR since 2010,
• with IT spend in Airports in 2013 representing 5.43% of their revenues (up from 4.9% in 2012)
• 90% of Airport CIO's (or technology chiefs) expect further increases in 2014 and beyond.

Passenger First:

• 80% of Airports now have check in kiosks to enable self service for passengers (with 98% expected by 2016),
• 95% of Airports are investing in mobile apps for passenger interaction, including flight information, navigation and retail promotions

Future of Data:

• 80% of Airports plan to invest in Business Intelligence for revenue optimisation and management bu 2016
• Yet only 8% of Airports are confident they have the data needed for BI, with most (65%) saying aircraft movement is the priority data today

Passenger Flow Monitoring

As data analytics become more sophisticated the BI trend will increasingly move towards passenger flow monitoring and asset tracking to help drive business outcomes. -with some metrics showing that an extra 10 minutes in security lines reduces an average passengers retails spend by 30%.

Clearly the trend towards mobile use is probably unstoppable at this point with many airports using apps as alternative payment means (as example paying for parking) and in the medium term as additional revenue generating methods via retail promotions.

Check in later this week for more specific insight into mobility trends in the airline industry.

Cisco's CMX solution continues to expand and evolve to enable real business value in this emerging marketplace, and there is much more to come.

For more information on CMX visit: www.cisco.com/go/cmx.

Going to Interop next week? You're in luck to learn more!

If you are attending Interop Las Vegas be sure to visit us at our booth#1327 and come listen to Cisco, partner and customer experts discuss these new innovations at our luncheon event on April 1, 2014. Register for the event.

If not, you can still register for our launch webcast April 1 to get all the details on the latest enterprisemobility products and solutions.