Dwell time, simply, is how long you spend in an airport, or airport space, before a flight. For most people, it’s not something they’ve ever actively really thought about.
For businesses in air travel and airports, like lounge operators, credit card companies or airlines, it’s one of the main things they think about. So what’s yours and what does it say about you?
Well, a lot. More importantly, the tracking of that dwell time has contributed to quite a lot of innovation in lounges and airports, with hopefully much more to come.
Crowding And Dwelling
Build it and they will come. Who knew Kevin Costner knew so much about lounges?! In truth, if someone builds a lounge, everyone will come and ensuring it’s a good experience is an art form requiring math. Crowds can be hard to predict and most lounges are “too” full these days.
Knowing the average dwell time of a customer, and even a specific customer profile is one of the best tools lounges have to predict the flows of customers, including how much they’ll need to stock in food and drinks and everything else during peak times.
Even outside of lounges, knowing how long an air traveler spends in the airport is vital to understanding what kind of businesses, restaurants or concessions to offer. There’s a reason grab and go places do really, really well and get away with charging $12 for water.
Travelers Have Patterns
Surprisingly to some, top tier frequent flyers typically have a really low dwell time compared to lower ranks or leisure travelers.
If an airline knows their lounge is full of top tiers that day, they can expect many people who won’t stay long. Whereas, if it’s a day with full flights and mostly leisure travel passengers, you can predict people will dwell far longer.
It makes sense. If you’re not used to the delights of a great airport lounge you come earlier, stay longer and take advantage of more. You also have less confidence in timings of the check in and security process, so you pad time in, in addition to the natural, “treat yourself” vibes.
If you do it all the time, every minute not in the airport is often seen as the win, so lounges are just a place to quickly reset and refresh before carrying on.
My Dwell Habits Have Evolved
The first time I experienced a true first class lounge I think I got to the airport at the earliest possible interval. I had hours in there and of course, tried everything.
But I’ve been very lucky, I’ve experienced most lounges many times, been spoiled by the best many times, and unless there’s a real wow factor moment, I’m happiest spending as little time waiting in an airport as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I still indulge from time to time, but I’ve seen a huge dip in my own dwell average.
As I strolled through T2 at Heathrow this week en route to the United Club, it occurred to me that most of my recent lounge visits averaged about 30 minutes in total. In that 30 minutes I’d say I have a maximum of one drink, often little or no food, and mostly take advantage of the wifi and nice calm facilities.
I’ve gotten my time from curb to security at Heathrow down to a decent science and I like it that way. At other airports with even more predictable security and check in patterns, I’ll shave even more time off, often leaving no time for lounges at all.
And this raises a fair question: if everyone could truly model out their time from curb to airside, would they spend as long? Things like TSA PreCheck and CLEAR have been monumental in adding a layer of certainty to this process and I’d expect we’ll see more of it. Will more passengers change habits as they have better confidence in making their flight while cutting it fine?
Now of course, all bets are off when I travel with my kids. And that’s kind of the point. We think we’re very unique in our travel habits, but there are many variables of our travels which drop us into a fairly predictable pattern … and dwell time.
Innovations In Response
When lounge access is a marquee benefit of being a frequent flyer, but most top frequent flyers hardly leave any time for lounge dwelling, is that a real selling point?
In response, we’ve seen really clever pivots lately, including from Air Canada and Capital One. Each brand has created curated “grab and go” offerings in their lounges or lounge-like areas to offer passengers complimentary things which have tangible value — a nitro cold brew latte, or a nice pastry — for “free”, which they’re totally able to take on the road with them.
That’s a huge departure from the days of lounges with signs everywhere saying no outside food and drinks and no removing food or drinks from the lounge. People never paid attention anyway, and this now just creates a formalized and better thought out approach to catering to all traveler needs.
The big question is: what’s next for adding value to a travelers airport journey? Be sure to share your lounge and travel habits as well.
