Designing a seamless passenger journey: Picking up luggage from origin to destination and back

Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) and the Technical University Delft, faculty Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) are working together on the Personalised Airport System for Seamless Mobility and Experience (PASSME) project.. There are two problems derived from the PASSME project. First, airport processes are not seamless, because passengers spend relatively much unwanted time at the airport. PASSME’s objective is to reduce the time spent on handling luggage by 30 minutes. Secondly, the current state of luggage check-in for passengers is experienced as negative in 21% of the cases. It is experienced as heavy, a hassle and it creates stress. PASSME aims to improve the entire quality of experience of the door-to-door journey for at least 70% of the passengers. During the internal research at KLM, different problems were found at the luggage check-in. Passengers spend on average 6 minutes and 11 seconds at the SSDOP and 9 minutes and 50 seconds at the CUDOP. When researching the current situation for passengers several things can be concluded. A quantitative research is performed (n=86) to research the experience passengers have during their passenger journey with check-in luggage. From the research it can be deduced that passengers travelling by public transport, experience the journey less positively (4.7 out of 7), than passengers who use other types of transportation (car 5.9 out of 7, taxi 6.2 out of 7). These passengers need to travel with their check-in luggage by train, bus, metro and other public transports to reach the airport. And this travelling on public transport with their check-in luggage, causes a more negative experience and emotions, because carrying the luggage from bus to train or storing the luggage, is experienced as not very positive. After this research it became clear where improvement was possible for passenger and airline. The experience can be improved for passengers who travel by public transport. Unwanted airport time can be reduced at the luggage check-in and at the reclaim belt. The solution is a door-to-door luggage service. The luggage is picked-up by a logistic partner at the home address of the passenger. The luggage is transported by a logistic partner to the accommodation of the passenger. This means that the luggage is removed out of the passenger journey from home to airport. The door-to-door luggage service improves the passenger experience when travelling to the airport by public transport from a 4.7 to 6.3. Because of this service, the passenger does not have to handle the check-in luggage anymore from origin to airport. Since this service removes the check-in luggage from the airport, the passenger does not have to spend time at the luggage check-in area nor at the reclaim area. In total, the waiting time and processing time for passengers can be reduced from 29 minutes to 34 minutes, when the door-to-door service is used.