Airports
DAA Takes Off with TARGIT
About the company

Dublin Airport Authority (daa) operates Dublin and Cork airports in Ireland and has significant overseas businesses through its ARI and daa International subsidiaries. Dublin and Cork airports are the two largest airports in the Republic of Ireland. Dublin Airport handled 32.9 million passengers in 2019, and is the fifth largest airport in Europe for transatlantic connectivity. daa currently has direct flights to over 190 destinations in 42 countries operated by almost 50 airlines.

Their Challenges
  • daa needed greater insight into their retail, car park, and overall airport operations
  • Management wanted to create a more seamless experience for customers
  • As the airport grew, employees needed access to data on the vastly increasing number of passengers.
How we helped
  • Data is updated every two minutes so airport employees always have near real-time access to information
  • Passenger volume is broken down by the minute so managers can create a more seamless passenger experience
  • Comprehensive overview gives operations managers direct insight into the exact routes that the airport is gaining and losing passengers.
TARGIT has played an incredibly important role in not just unlocking the value of our data but more importantly unlocking the value of our analytics talent. 
- Marc Mullan, VP Data & Analytics, Dublin Airport

Greater Insight into Millions Moving Pieces

In 2010, Dublin Airport Authority (daa) adopted TARGIT Decision Suite to help them better manage their duty-free retail shops. They were so impressed with the comprehensive view of the business, that by 2013 they had implemented TARGIT in their carparks and general airport operations. Today, they have greater insight into the millions of moving pieces of overall airport operations and continue to improve the efficiency and customer experience every day with actionable data.


This is what a typical experience at the Dublin Airport looks like today: You approach the gates, scan your ticket at a security point, and the gates automatically swing open for you. If something is off with your ticket or timing, you're redirected to an airport official.

While you wait in line for the X-ray, a queue measurement system tracks cell phone locations anonymously to monitor how long people have been waiting in one particular area. If the waiting time is longer than airport efficiency benchmarks, managers are alerted in real-time on their TARGIT slideshows and can open another X-ray line in a busy section immediately.

Airport - Security TARGIT dashboard

Since data is updated every two minutes in the TARGIT system, administrators and managers know they are always looking at the most up-to-date information on passenger movement, overall volume, and employee efficiency.

The system delivers reports to managers on passenger volume broken down by the minute, so managers can always plan ahead for the busiest days of the week and busiest hours of the day to ensure the airport is staffed optimally and passengers move through to their gates as quickly as possible.

As they’ve discovered, passenger patterns can vary wildly — from passengers who show up hours before their flight to those who arrive 15 minutes before and the average of passengers in between. Nevertheless, daa is able to predict how many people will be arriving at the airport and at what time with an average of 97 percent accuracy. 

When employees want to drill down into a particular number for greater detail — such as what days of the week most people travel from Ireland to, say, France — they do so with a single mouse click. In the past, this required hours of coding by the IT department.
 
BI Dashboard

Such a comprehensive overview gives operations managers direct insight into the exact routes that Dublin Airport is gaining and losing passengers. This helps them analyze the market, find out why, and correct whatever needs to be corrected faster than ever.

And daa doesn’t plan on stopping there. The airport will soon be bringing in information on HR and Procurement to give greater visibility. This will provide the management and staff with the information they need to take action. There are also future plans to bring in the ERP data for greater insight into finances.

 

"TARGIT has played an incredibly important role in not just unlocking the value of our data but, more importantly, unlocking the value of our analytics talent," says Marc Mullan, VP Data & Analytics at Dublin Airport.

daa's business intelligence initiatives have resulted in a sharpened focus on the overall customer experience, from the moment a traveler parks their car at the airport carpark until they arrive at their final destination.

And with hundreds of thousands of travelers passing through the airport doors every week, daa knows they always need to be on top of their game. That’s why they rely on the TARGIT Decision Suite to keep operations running as efficiently as possible.

Originally published March 17, 2020. Updated February 7, 2023
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