Airports Company South Africa (Acsa) is on a significant technology drive to enhance the customer experience across its airport network.

Acsa Chief Information Officer, Mthokozisi Mncwabe, said the need to digitalise the passenger experience, the airport environment, and Acsa’s operational processes, has been identified as a core strategic focus for the business. 

“We are working on several initiatives that will harness the power of artificial intelligence and robotics to drive self-service functionality through the various touchpoints at Acsa’s airports,” Mncwabe highlighted. 

“For example, we will introduce robotics to enhance the customer experience in line with a global trend that is seeing increased use of this technology for the delivery of retail and food and beverage services at airports.” 

Similarly, Acsa is also looking to introduce a biometrics-driven border control system in a project completed jointly with the Department of Home Affairs. The project will focus on security processing systems that use facial recognition capabilities or biometric information embedded in a bar code in each passenger’s passport. 

Personalised customer experience 

Mncwabe explains that Acsa is working on a R150 million (€7.4m) initiative with Microsoft to create a personalised customer experience, by leveraging technology to get to know its customers. 

“We will create a platform that will integrate all the various customer services currently operating in silos. We want to use this platform to bring them all together into one user interface,” explained Mncwabe. 

“The idea is that multiple services, such as booking a flight, a car or a hotel will be aggregated and accessed through a single platform and user interface.” 

According to him, the project depends on introducing AI technology that will facilitate and assist with data analysis and personalisation.

“At the moment, we are engaging with several service providers to deliver a user-friendly and easy-to-understand platform. We will also continue to strengthen digital integration across all of our operations to improve efficiency and enhance the experience of our airports for all stakeholders, especially passengers,” said Mncwabe. 

Cybersecurity plays integral role 

Cybersecurity plays an integral part in Acsa’s technology drive, with the company adopting a zero trust architecture approach, leveraging existing investments, and introducing a cybersecurity mesh architecture. 

“Unfortunately, cybersecurity is always a game of catch-up as hackers are dedicated and committed to constantly finding and exploiting new vulnerabilities. The cyber threat landscape continues to evolve in sophistication and frequency of attack, so it is impossible to always defend against malicious activity,” noted Mncwabe. 

“However, at the very least, organisations must ensure that their security systems are robust and up to date in terms of the latest security patches. It is important to note that Acsa has significantly improved its cyber and information security maturity by focusing on people, processes and technology.”