AMERICAS. Corporación América Airports CEO Martín Eurnekian proved a star early turn at the Knowledge Hub of the Summit of the Americas — A Virtual Experience. The all-digital regional event officially opened its doors today (5 April).
Corporación América Airports is a holding company that acquires, develops and operates airport concessions. The company currently operates 52 airports in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador, Armenia and Italy. Eurnekian is also Chairman of Aeropuertos Argentina 2000 (AA2000) and Chair of Airports Council International (ACI World).
In a compelling one-on-one interview with The Moodie Davitt Report President and Editorial Director Dermot Davitt, Eurnekian discussed both the short-term and lasting consequences of COVID-19 on his business and the wider aviation industry. He also offered a deeply insightful view on how recovery will take shape in 2021 and beyond.
Eurnekian said, “The whole industry on average is experiencing a -70% decrease in traffic figures year-on-year in 2020 vs 2019 and that trend is continuing through 2021.
“There are two factors driving this. The first is fear, which was the main driver at the beginning of the pandemic that stopped travel. Now that the pandemic has evolved into a new kind of normality, the second factor preventing industry recovery is the restrictions on travel.”
Asked what travel retail can do to adapt to the new normal and restart the industry, Eurnekian stressed the importance of transparency and collaboration. He said, “We have to come to terms with the fact that this [health issue] is here to stay. We have to start developing systems that can leverage technology to enhance safety and restart travel.”
“We are in uncharted territory here,” he added. “We’re working with the information we have and putting a lot of hope into vaccines. In an asymmetric way, these programmes will eventually restart international travel.”
However, Eurnekian also believes that the industry should take affirmative action beyond simply putting its faith in the global vaccination programmes. He commented, “We also need to think of a plan B. As an industry, we need to communicate with governments and develop a coordinated approach.”
As Chairman of ACI World, Eurnekian shared his views on whether the voice of the aviation industry has been sufficiently heard through the crisis. “Our voice has been raised, but I don’t think we have been heard enough,” he responded. “If you look at the existing measures in place, it’s clear that they aren’t globally-coordinated nor do they maximise the available resources to make travel safe again. One of the reasons it’s so hard to create a unified response is because there are so many sovereign governments who have an opinion on how to do this integration.”
Eurnekian explained that one of ACI World’s key priorities is to find ways to work with governments for a restart. Key to this, he said, is to remove the negative stigma on travel. “At the beginning, passenger safety was a priority and travel was pinpointed as one of the initial reasons why the virus spread.
“So many restrictive measures were placed on the travel industry that are disproportionate to the real risk today. The virus is already all over the world. We now know how it behaves and how to test it. Our priority at ACI World is to collaborate with governments and other stakeholders to develop new systems to allow the industry to restart.”
What does this collaboration look like? According to Eurnekian it’s all about embracing digital solutions. “We’re all in the same boat and need to think out of the box to drive recovery. For example, the associations asked, ‘How do we keep the Summit of the Americas going even if people can’t meet face to face?’ and The Moodie Davitt Report and Filtr.Qingwa found a digital solution with this Summit.”
The pandemic crisis has certainly accelerated the need to adopt digital solutions and to Eurnekian, enhancing digital is a key strategic priority for Corporación América Airports. He said, “We’re trying trying to create a roadmap for data-sharing, integration and collection that will be the raw material for industry recovery. Once completed, we will use this to propose new solutions, products and services. However, there is no way to do that if stakeholders’ systems don’t connect with each other.
“Once we start the exercise of transparency and collaboration, we can transform the customer experience which will lead to more efficiency in terms of revenue and customer satisfaction,” he added.
Commenting on where Corporación América Airports’ own investment priorities lie, Eurnekian said, “Most of the investments done by airports are to increase capacity. Everyone has overcapacity now, and nobody can determine what kind of capacity requirements we will have in the next few years.
“What we are doing is working on things that will have a lot of impact on passengers and revenues, like building new runways to prepare us for growth.”
The session concluded with Eurnekian sharing a realistic but ultimately optimistic outlook on travel retail’s recovery. He said: “Everyone is excited to travel again, and I believe that our industry will always be an amazing place to showcase brands and engage with customers in a unique way.
“Our present focus should be to unite behind a standardised way to reopen the industry. In the future, we will need to explore how to compete in the virtual world using the advantages that we have, because we need to take travel retail to the next level.”
