Casper/Natrona International Airport (CPR) in Casper, Wyo., is updating its gate hold seating as part of an update to its terminal.
Airport Director Glenn Januska said the updates include adding 2,000 square feet of space to the gate hold area along with adding 30 to 40 additional seats. A second passenger bridge is also being added and the gate hold will be renovated as part of a branding exercise with the airport.
Januska said the airport originally budgeted $175,000 to replace the Arconas seats installed as part of the 2004 renovation of the CPR terminal. However, Januska said they still made the same style as the existing 166 seats, so they opted to have updated items shipped to the airport, which will be installed by airport staff.
The overall cost for seating dropped to about $51,000 with the change.
“It was a good exercise to go through and look at this,” he said. “There are some worn arms…but everything with the seating is fine if we can upgrade the fabric and the materials to fit in with whatever the theme is and do something more functional and save some money, to me that was a good deal.”
Januska said some of the seats originally had tables, but he took them out because they took up valuable real estate in a very crowded gate hold area. Travelers were setting drinks on the floor instead and spilling on the carpet, so the seats will now have cup holders as part of the update.
Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) will install all new seating as part of its new terminal project, slated for completion in 2020.
SLC Airport Director Bill Wyatt said the airport spent a lot of time interacting with the community about things they wanted in the new terminal. They also met with Delta Air Lines about their needs and what they wanted to see in terms of gate hold seating.
“All of the carriers have taken a renewed interest in holdroom seating because if you fly at all, you’re used to the scene where the ticket agent arrives at the desk and everyone jumps out of their seat and starts jockeying for position,” he said. “I think there’s a hope and a thought that proper and thoughtful holdroom seating and configuration can ameliorate that to some extent.”
By making sure every seat in the gate hold area has two arm rests, Wyatt said travelers will be more willing to use them.
“We paid very close attention to the idea that the airport should reflect the community that we serve, so one of the decisions that we made was to make sure every seat has two arm rests and has access to power,” he said.
Wyatt said the seats at SLC will have plug-in power, but there will be an option to move towards induction charging in the future.
SLC opted for Zoeftig for the 5,300 seats they’re buying. They’ve had a long relationship with the company, Wyatt said, which gave the airport confidence the procurement would be delivered on time.
“We have a 20-year warranty on the seats that we’ve purchased from them,” Wyatt said. “Our own maintenance department can recover the seats and do the regular maintenance and it has just been a great relationship.”
On top of creating a better overall traveler experience in the terminal, Wyatt said they’re looking at the potential cost savings in maintenance to accompany the new seating.
“Holdroom seats take quite a beating from the general public,” he said. “Having a really durable product was important to us.”
SFO embraces a lounge feeling
Katy Mercer, principal and head of interiors for Woods Bagot, said San Francisco International Airport (SFO) has been a model around diversity of seating options for more than a decade with its mix of high-density tandem seating along with community tables and the iconic high-back lounge chairs. Passengers loved the lounge chair, so they needed to continue being a leader with renovations underway in Terminal 1.
“In early discussions with them, we were really trying to create a diverse lounge and diverse landscape within each of the hold rooms when it came to the furnishings,” she said. “We wanted to push it even further than just the iconic chair they’ve been using for years.”
Designers pushed for the minimal amount of high-density seating in each gate hold because people were only utilizing every other seat, Mercer said. They create a mix of seating to accommodate the mix of passenger typologies and what they may want when sitting at the gate.
Plans were created by starting with the maximum amount of seating needed, then determining how much diversity of seating it would allow within the terminal.
“Depending if you’ve got a group or you’ve got children or you’re a business traveler and need to take a phone call, we tried to create furniture in a landscape within the hold room that can accommodate all those different passenger types,” she said. “That led us to finding a high-back lounge chair because people like the sense of privacy and refuge that offers, as well as allows them to take phone calls in it and now accommodating a console table or coffee table that’s more robust with power.”
The lounge chairs were focused along the window and concourse of the gate hold areas, Mercer said, which they termed their “fuzzy edge.” All of the tandem and high-density seating was focused towards the middle, but they decided to never have more than four high-density seats in a row by disrupting them with a side table with a lamp integrated into it, where people can set drinks or food.
“The already began to break up the landscape and create a little hospitality, residential moment with a localized light level as if it were a little table lamp sitting next to you with a warm glow helping with the light level,” she said. “We created that hospitality layer in conjunction with SFO’s desire to have an exceptional guest experience that would rival a hotel lobby.”
Mercer said community tables were designed to look more like a library table as opposed to heavy bar-like furniture. They were mixed with both high and low seats to allow ADA access and give travelers options as to how high they wish to sit.
“Our community tables seat 12-14 people and they sit across from each other, but they don’t need to know each other is because we created an island in the middle of that has the same localized light feature built into the library table that was complementary to that one in the console table,” she said. “It’s that hospitality layer that you might see in a really lovely library, hotel lobby or airline lounge.”
SFO also added high-back booths for the gate hold areas. They allow for families to corral each other and sit while allowing children to eat. Business travelers can also use it to hold meetings.
“Mostly we thought about it for people that have to have a conference call,” she said. “they can almost think of it as a work station, but a more inviting work station.”
Make the right choice
Paul Williams, CEO of Zoeftig, said airports should give due consideration to comfort, durability, maintainability, cleanliness, size and density. Often there are conflictions between these areas such as comfort and durability.
“We also consult with the airport or airline to understand their passenger profiles, passenger flow and boarding processes to provide the most suitable product type, configurations and layout,” he said.
Williams said normally, when the task of maintaining the existing seating becomes a major issue, it’s at that time that the passenger complaints and satisfaction take a negative turn. As such, airports should listen to their passenger feedback as this will quickly tell them when it’s time to change the seats.
Williams said It’s not unusual to see conflicts internally between passenger experience/customer services, facilities and maintenance and the commercial needs.
“Airports depend on passengers spending money however, passengers need to feel both welcome and cared for with good provision of seating in the correct location,” he said. “Passengers do not want to feel the pressure that they should be making a concession purchase before being able to take a seat.”
Januska said they did the evaluation of the current seats and when they were able to determine they could be updated to meet designs of the new seats, it showed they could pursue changes while saving budget.
“It met our requirements and we could do this and it was going to be substantially less cost, it was an easy decision,” he said.
Williams said there are many new materials available, from organic upholstery that can be easily recycled at the end of its life to metal replacement composites that require less energy to manufacture and are also easily recyclable. It’s simply a matter of specifying the individual needs at the beginning of the process and determining what’s important to the airport/client.
“There are always new ideas coming along that we are asked to incorporate within our seating,” he said. “Our message is, keep it simple and ensure any technology incorporated is easily upgraded as the airport is investing in the seating for probably a period of twenty years as we know that technology is constantly evolving.”
As far as current trends go, there is a leaning at present towards less formal linear seating. However, with most of the existing less formal seating products currently available in the market, one of the greatest issues this brings to an airport is adhering to the rules and regulations they are targeted on with seat density requirements.
Mercer said when picking new seating for your gate hold areas, it’s not so much thinking about the selection of the seating early on in the planning process, but thinking about the knowing the typologies, the mix and ratio of those seating typologies that you want to offer passengers.
There has also been a focus on more hospitality in the seating inside a terminal, but airports need to make special considerations before picking furniture, such as extreme durability.
“Most hospitality spaces that you find have high maintenance upkeep, high turnover, they’re willing to replace their chair over and over and over again to have that lux factor. No airport is willing to do that,” she said. “maintenance and durability were high, on the list for us and what I’d recommend anybody look at.”
Mercer said they negotiated a 10-year 24/7 warranty with all manufacturers on the SFO project, so they had to overly engineer and consider what product they were going to give the airport.
The seating also needs to look inviting, comfortable enough to seat lots of different body types and also have enough mechanisms to make it feel like there’s choice, like a slight swivel.
“You don’t need a ton of different bells and whistles, otherwise it will break,” she said.
Williams said lounge style seating is a very difficult product to purchase for airports as it requires much greater research than traditional gate seating and attention should be given to strength and stability.
Most of the traditional international gate seat suppliers test to a very high standard and the products pass the tests for severe contract use which is not the case with lounge style seating.
“Much attention should be given to the specifications of finishes and product durability as the life of these products will not be the same as traditional gate seating and we have seen products that require replacing after just a few months,” he said
Wyatt said airports should consult with their carriers when making gate hold seating updates.
“They have a lot of experience and can tell you a lot about passenger wants, needs and habits,” he said. “They have a lot to share about passengers and also their own process changes that might be coming that might effect how passengers approach seating.
He said to also look at the current trends inside your own terminal to see wear patterns, what technology is coming and the adaptability of the chairs you’re buying. Then find a partner in the project who you can develop a long-term relationship with.
“If we know anything, it’s that we’re living in a very fast changing world here in the airport and aviation world,” he said.
Still a yearn for Power
At SFO, Mercer said the goal was to find 85 percent of seating with power availability. It also makes people more forgiving to sitting in tandem seating with a stranger next to them.
“People get it, you just need some power, so you’ll sit and work on your laptop next to me,” she said.
Williams said there are many alternatives to in-seat power provision; from charging station poles for multiple users to lockable charging cupboards however, only in-seat power really achieves true customer satisfaction when the passenger is using gate seating.
“It’s an investment for the airport but with careful design, suppliers can assist in minimising costs,” he said.
Williams Said Inductive charging is an interesting developing product which definitely has its position alongside traditional power sources, both of which are available with all Zoeftig products, however the main disadvantage with inductive charging is that should the passenger want to use their phone or tablet whilst sat down, they generally will be holding the device within their hand at which point inductive charging doesn’t work.
Januska said CPR doesn’t have a basement, but they know they need to incorporate power in the gate hold area. While it’s not a connecting airport, there can still be a challenge meeting passenger needs in the event of a delay or a diversion.
“We’ve had people move vending machines out away from the wall, unplug the vending machines so they can plug their phones or their laptops in,” he said.
The seating updates at CPR won’t include outlets built into them, but Januska said they’re looking at other options to supply power to the gate hold area.
“Whether it’s added to the existing seats or it’s going to be in the area or if there’s going to be a designated charging station, we will have something like that,” he said. “It will either be an ‘aftermarket’ connection or something in the seating area for people to plug in their devices.”
