Chris McLaughlin
We knew that aviation as it always does would come back and we knew that we had to be prepared for it.
Narrator
We’re looking at domestic markets recovering faster, shorter routes that are in high demand. Those of us in aviation. The aerospace industry is strong. Some of the fastest-growing segments within USM will be expensive to all. Marketplace, we need to invest. We need succeed in aligning everyone in one single step.
Scott Boland Krouse
Hello everyone and welcome back to the velocity podcast, brought to you by management consulting firm, Oliver Wyman. I'm Scott Boland Krouse, a principal specializing in our transportation and hospitality sectors. Joining me today is Lawrence Burka, also from Oliver Wyman and Chris McLaughlin, Chief Operating Officer at Denver International Airport. I'm thrilled to have you both here on the show today. How are you doing?
Lawrence Burka
Doing great Scott. Nice to see you again and speak with you, happy to be welcoming Chris on to the show. Great to speak to you again, Chris, and looking forward to our conversation today.
Chris
And thanks to you both. I'm really excited to be part of today's episode with you.
Scott
Great. Looking forward to this interesting discussion. Oliver Wyman in collaboration with the World Travel and tourism Council (WTTC) recently launched the paper which offered global guidelines around adoption of innovative digital technologies to enable safe and seamless travel. This will be the basis of the conversation between us today. We will then explore the ways in which Denver International Airport, has been one of the early adopters and are leading the pack with biometric capabilities. Before we dive right in, Lawrence, for our listeners at home, can you explain the safe and seamless traveler Journey program, and what it is?
Lawrence
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Scott. So together with WTTC as Scott mentioned. We worked to define the safe and seamless traveler Journey which ultimately had a vision to create an end-to-end, seamless with journey across airlines, hotels, car rentals, cruises, etc. So all aspects of the traveler's journey, a traveler being able to use the one digital identity that is authenticated, verified and trusted across all of the stakeholders in their journey. To accomplish that we defined five different imperatives for success. First is public and private sector collaboration and it's really important to understand that governments need to work together to create that foundation that all data in a traveler's digital identity is authenticated and verifiable. Then you have the collaboration between the public and private sector which is really important to drive innovation and adoption. The private sector will need to work together to advocate for these regulations and global standards. The second is all around data collection and sharing. We believe that data should be owned, managed and provided to stakeholders and their journey by the traveler. The traveler should be able to include any data that they choose. The foundation is a government-issued identity card, whether that's a driver's license, national ID or passport and it shared in a transparent manner to the traveler so that they know how their data is being used by the different stakeholders. It's also important to use zero knowledge messaging and other privacy by design capabilities.
Scott
What is zero knowledge messaging for those who are not familiar with that term?
Lawrence
Yeah, great question Scott. So zero knowledge messaging is the ability to provide a binary Yes or No answer to any stakeholder vs. having to share personal information. For example, does Scott have a valid passport that has not expired. Yes/No, they can get a green or red symbol and they don't necessarily need to know the actual date of expiration or the birth date. If you see yourself going and purchasing something at duty-free in an airport and you have to be 21 verses sharing the actual age of the purchaser, you share a Yes/No whether they meet the criteria of age required. The third Is data privacy and this is all around adhering to the highest level of data privacy standards using privacy by design principles. And I think everyone knows around the globe that cybersecurity is a growing threat to enable adoption, security is going to be the number one driver of adoption and we need to keep the travelers data as safe as possible. The fourth is interoperability and this is really something that Chris will speak to you in a little bit. But it's all around aiming to connect the end-to-end journey in a interoperable way that governments, different stakeholders in the private sector, can all receive similar information. The critical element of interoperability is at travelers data is stored based on these global standards, which will then allow that data to be shared with all stakeholders public or private and be able to ingest that data into their systems. The last of our five principles is customer-first by design in the state and seamless traveler's journey whatever is created, the technology needs to enable stakeholders and travelers to utilize simple solutions that are easily operatable and that create an intuitive non cumbersome customer experiences. Furthermore, COVID has really accelerated this agenda. The proof-of-concept for digital identities are becoming a necessity which are around these health passes which everyone is talking about and will be needed moving forward, whether it's a test results or a vaccination record. But lastly its enabling that touchless experience converting were checkpoints used to have to actually physically pass and ID for someone to prove your identity. You can now do that in a touchless manner. And lastly, the goal of the seamless traveler journey while it has shifted a bit over the concepts, it still aims to help reduce the strain on infrastructure when travel does come back. I think it's really important is it helps to bring back the traveler and stakeholder confidence, any much quicker manner to help the industry recover.
Scott
So, capturing, uploading biometric and biographic data before travel could transform the traveler experience. It would allow the border and security agencies to authenticate and pre-clear travelers in advance of arrival.
Lawrence
Absolutely, it enhances the security across the entire system, which is something that border security is in governments are very in tune to and it's always on the top of their list of priorities. It also helps relieve that infrastructure and capacity constraints. Furthermore. The traveler experience will be significantly improved. It's less checks, it’s shorter lines at ports and airports. It creates the ability to social distance were needed, which Chris, at the Denver Airport speak to us about shortly. But it's something that they do and have done and implemented quite well.
Scott
And one of those key areas for travelers, is to be able to create a single digital identity from hitting their biographic data and any additional information required for identity establishment and verification. This will be used across all stakeholders, public and private and the travelers journey has become apparent, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Lawrence
Yeah, that’s a really interesting point. There needs to be strong collaboration across the board from airport to airlines to technology providers to government. It goes back to one of those key principles of collaboration. This is a hugely complex ecosystem, which is a challenge to navigate. Chris, it would be great for you to share a little bit of insights into the biometric program that you’ve implemented here recently at Denver.
Chris
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Lawrence. It's been quite a journey for us that started about a year ago and what a year it's been for all of us. So, Lawrence you ended with the customer, your 5th, principal and really the customers where we started. So, very early in the pandemic. We knew that we were going to have to do things differently. Candidly very early in the pandemic. It wasn't much of an issue, because as we now know, worldwide air travel was essentially ground to almost a halt. We were operating at less than 5% of normal in the early days. We knew that aviation as it always does, would come back. And we knew that we had to be prepared for it. So we started with the path of the customer and you've heard the expression curb the gate, we followed sort of that logic and mapped out our customers journey and focused on pinch point, focus on areas that would be most difficult for them to navigate while maintaining social distance. A term that we didn't even know what year ago and we landed on two areas in particular for us. We landed on our security checkpoint and in Denver, if you're flying on the B or C, Concourse, that area of least control that area where you can’t choose to wait five seconds, while the next person goes up the escalator, or you can’t choose to put 5 or 6 ft between you and the bin in front of you. At the X-ray an area that you have a real hard time controlling is the train. Because once you get on to it, you don't have an assigned seat. You are really trusting your fellow travelers, not to overcrowd and not to pack it in. So that was the primary area early in code that we really want to do address. Now, if you look at the Coalition early on the TSA became very willing and eager your partner with us. And so the checkpoint became a next likely opportunity for us to tackle. One, it is difficult for customers, two, it involves multiple steps. There's the line before the document check. There is the line between the document check and the X-ray slash body screening. And then potentially there's the line after the primary check if someone has to go through a secondary check. So, there is stage is where people get stock, so, it was a logical place for us to look. There really is this hole bigger thing out there predated COVID, its touchless travel, seamless travel and we've been talking about it for a long time. I would say Aviation is defined by watershed moments, whether that's deregulation in the late seventies, whether that's 911 whether that's the fuel crises in the two thousands, whether that's the Christmas Day bomber, whether that's excessive line weights in the last decade or whether it's the covid crisis. These watershed moments often take technologies processes policies that have been in play for in some cases decades and they allow us the opportunity to accelerate because when the need is real, when the crisis is real, we as an industry, tend to react more quickly and put things in motion that had been kind of, in thought for a long time. But never had enough energy to actually sustain that perpetual motion. We do envision a whole new world of whether that's self bag drops, whether that’s access to lounges, whether that's concierge services, whether that's the ability to order food before you even leave the comfort of your couch. We believe the seamless touchless experience is here to stay for customers. And frankly, what we've done so far in Denver is only just the beginning.
Scott
Chris, do you want to talk a little bit about navigating that complex ecosystem of the multiple stakeholders that you had to bring together.
Chris
Sure, so first and foremost in terms of talking about the journey that we mapped out, the conclusion was this program that we now call VeriFly. We introduced VeriFly in the fall of this year and VeriFly consists of the ability to reserve a dedicated time and space through the TSA checkpoint and across our train car where we limit a specific train car to a specific number of passengers in a specific time slot. We control it with a biometrically enabled Egay, and we allow you in or out based on your reservation. So, it's been great for customers, especially those that truly have a high degree of concern for their health. One of my favorite anecdotes is the woman who had to travel for health-related reasons on a weekly basis had no choice. And so, this gave her the ability to do it safely. In terms of navigating through the various stakeholders though, there are competing interests. And when you provide a specialized program, the first thing that people ask is why are they special? Did they pay for it? Are you treating them differently? We're not, by the way our program is very free. We want people to use it. It's a free service. Something we think is the best thing for the community and then we have to deal with volume. So, is there enough time and space for everybody if we dedicate this car and this lane in the checkpoint? Does that help the overall or does it hurt the overall? And an airline might view that differently than the TSA, who might view that differently than the First Responders who might view it differently than our media relations who might view that differently than any other group. And we have to work with that Coalition and ensure that our mutual interest at least our primary interest is aligned and that was the most important and maybe the hardest thing that we did, when we built VeriFly was ensure early on that we were bringing everyone to the table. By the way, we didn’t build it by committee. So when I say, bring everyone to the table, don't be fooled that you can get everyone to agree with every new innovative thing, you're going to do. So, the second hardest thing we had to do was push through and that meant that when we knew we were right and when we knew that what we were doing was the best thing for the most people, we had to push through some hard weeks and months to ensure that that we can put it up, evidence out there that even the detractors ultimately had to come around and say wow. This was the right thing to do and I'm glad Denver did it.
Scott
And so, what were some of those evidence pieces as you're going down the path of identifying VeriFly and understanding what the success would look like for Denver and the airport itself and all these stakeholders? What are the key components that you look for in a technology provider?
Chris
Things for us really happened partly because of this Coalition that came together. So, frankly speaking we were not seeking a technology provider. We were thinking about the problems facing our customers. And in the moment that we were thinking about those problems, a technology provider reached out to us unsolicited and said, and again, a risk of patting ourselves on the back and said, “Hey, we think Denver is an innovative airport that knows how to think ahead, we want to help create a solution for this pandemic and for the future and we'd like to partner with you and we'd like to invest,” it was that coming together that was the two- first pieces in this Coalition, the president of a company refers to it, as a coalition of the willing. And it was two people coming together saying, let's do this. And then we joined more and more into the group. That's how we got where we wanted to go. So, success criteria for something like this was really important and a little bit difficult because these were things that didn't exist yet so we looked at quantitative and qualitative measures, quantitative simple as how many people are enrolling in the program? How many people are using the program, those types of things. From a qualitative perspective, we looked at the true NPS score as well as things, like, “how likely are you to use this again?” things like that. For me an important measurement is just how interested is someone in communicating about the service. So we gave everybody a survey and you'd be surprised at the open rate. Our open rate is around 25%, for an open rate on a survey. I think a lot of organizations will tell you, that’s pretty darn good and then the scores of the survey are exceptional. People's desire to use the service a second time is in the nineties, to refer to a friend is in the nineties', a pure NPS in the seventies. It's truly a service that from a qualitative perspective is proving itself to be exceedingly valuable. And remember we were trying to be super popular for everyone that was in our goal. Our goal was to provide an opportunity for our most vulnerable travelers, for those people who truly need to feel safe as they travel. So, it is sort of that instance of if one person was able to travel through COVID because of this safely and the other thousands weren’t negatively impacted then that in itself would have been a successful measurement in our case. What I'll say is the qualitative measurements are off the charts from a quantitative perspective because we're a single airport sort of a single note in the network, growing the program has been slow, getting thousands and thousands of people to participate on a daily or weekly basis isn't easy. That said, I will tell you there are hundreds of thousands of members of VeriFly now and thousands of transactions on a weekly basis through this Airport.
Scott
The technology provider, did they reach out pre-COVID and it just happened to work that COVID hit and things aligned, or was it as more of a post-COVID?
Chris
It was post-COVID. So, it's a provider that we’ve know, I mean we talked to technologists all the time. So, this was someone, we had talked to pre-COVID about some other initiatives. Frankly, those initiatives were put on sort of a full stop with COVID. It was those early conversations I would say that led the technology provider to understand that we were the right partner for them. So, they reached out to us within a month into covid.
Scott
Sounds like you've got quite a positive response from people and travelers who have used VeriFly app and have the experience. Can you talk a little about some of the challenges you may have faced.
Chris
Yeah. So, there’s a few challenges. There’s one that I will share first is we still haven’t cracked the return trip. You give somebody an experience on the way out and they want it on the way home. And so I would tell you that our single biggest challenge is that we're a one-way service right now. We're still thinking through that and again, growing the network is an important step in solving that problem. I would also tell you that even though we believe strongly, we're doing the right thing where we have struggled some is perception. So when you have this limited capacity train car and you have this group of people that are in it and you haven't done the research and you don't know that VeriFly is a free service that you could have participated in. You are envious of those folks in the other car and you think it's unfair that they were given quote on quote special treatment. We believe strongly that we're being fair because we're offering the service again for free and open to everyone and we're advertising as publicly as we can. But that factor has hurt us and it has caused negative perception out there. You really try hard to correct that that has been a challenge for us. I would say a third challenge is not everybody is tech savvy. So, I will tell you, full disclosure my daughter at four o’clock in the morning, 13 years old in a relatively dark car heading to the airport for our first trip, during COVID was able to successfully enroll, make a reservation excessively capture, a photo image that was high quality enough and get through the process. So, 13 year olds can do it, but maybe they're more tech-savvy than the rest of us.
Scott
And since that point Chris, where you talk about awareness in some individuals and travelers not being aware of the service of VeriFly and the capability to enroll, how are you making customer’s aware of this program?
Chris
We’re making customer’s aware as best we can locally and that includes signage everywhere included as part of our COVID response message. Every chance we get, every press release, every interview and signs coming to the airport, etc. But the thing that has really begun to accelerate VeriFly and it's the thing we knew would accelerate VeriFly is that there are airlines who have started to adopt VeriFly for other purposes, including a true digital identity or health passport purpose. And as those carriers have come online, VeriFly enrollments have gone from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands and VeriFly is now available in 55 countries worldwide, maybe more by now, as a health passport, not necessarily line management or reservation system, so at the 55 countries. I think it's five continents if I'm not mistaken and now in venues like hotels, there's a hotel chain that just announced VeriFly last week. They're convention centers using VeriFly, their universities using VeriFly and that list just continues to grow. So, this thing that started as a little line management reservation system in Denver, Colorado, has in five months, gone worldwide.
Scott
And Chris, one of the things I'm curious about the word biometrics means a lot of things to a lot of people. What have you seen from adopters of VeriFly around the use of biometrics?
Chris
So, I think an important component for VeriFly is this notion that it's VeriFly, it's not give your face to the City and County of Denver or give your face to the federal government. I think what we see is consumers, customers, travelers, feel more comfortable. I think acting in the sort of app, based world, obviously, customers give consent. They do all the things that they have to give them permission to use their biometrics in VeriFly. But there hasn't been a lot of resistance to it, except I guess those people that haven’t joined. And let me be clear, we don't expect everyone to join and we will always be an opt-in mindset. We don't think this is something that has to be required for everybody, for the applications were talking about, at least, we think that we can truly rely on opt-in Biometrics are different to different people, but the other thing that I would tell you is for us, we think the biometric is different and every aspect in your journey. And so we in many regards are using a biometric as a point-to-point wayfinding tool as opposed to a security verification tool. And that means we can do it differently. It means we can think about working at a higher speed. There's a trade-off always between confidence and speed when you're talking about biometrics. If you're using the tool for security, confidence is of the utmost. If you're using it for speed and a non-security environment, like getting on a train that confidence score, doesn't have to be exactly as high for you to serve the purpose that you want to serve. And so it's really thinking about biometrics, not just a different for everybody. But actually the application, the use of the biometric is different potentially for several steps along the passengers journey.
Lawrence
I think that's a great point Chris in the report that Oliver Wyman did with WTTC, we dive quite a bit into the level of biometrics that are needed. And as an example for Chris, just discussed, to cross the border the level of biometric and certainty of one's identity is very different than accessing a train car at Denver Airport. Educating the public about, that is really an important evolution that government in the private sector, have to take on as part of the adoption and driving the adoption of biometrics in travel ,in the future is biometrics aren't all created equal. The one thing that's created equally is making sure there's consent and people know how it's being used is really the important piece. So, Chris I think maybe just to shift a bit, you know we’ve talked a lot about the customers and the ecosystem that's been created at Denver. But in other interesting perspective is considering how biometrics and actually impacted the airlines, airport employees, and the actual operation of the airport.
Chris
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that is when we talked about airports. We think about the hundreds of thousands of passengers that come through an airport like mine every day while hopefully soon back to hundreds of thousands a day. But what actually is in many cases, more significant is the tens of thousands of employees that come to the same airport every single day. And their experience through COVID was equally as important for us to protect as a customer. If a customer, has chances to be in close, proximity to other people, or to touch things if they have that opportunity in a day. An employee has a 10x or maybe 100x as they live and work in this environment. And so again, similar to our customer experience, there were things that we were contemplating and even starting to play with before COVID that we really accelerated and we're moving quickly to expand further with the way employees come to work. And then access their their micro-level worksite once they’re at the airport and it built on the VeriFly platform. So, VeriFly, when we built their VeriFly first, we said we're not going to do anything that doesn't last and so we thought of this as a first thing to do, but the first of many and the thing that we're working on, now, we hope to launch maybe less than six weeks from now is a new entrance, a portal, if you will, for employees and certain select travelers, that will arrive into a new experience where they can process through a facility essentially in a completely touch freeway and process all the way into the back end of the airport, avoiding the main terminal altogether. This facility will be built with the capability to do touchless temperature checking. I'm not a huge believer in temperature checking as the be-all end-all for sure but it is a layer. It is a layer that certain of our employers require today of their employees or putting that capability in. We can talk toggle it on or toggle it off, but that capability is there and this will allow us to maximize utilization of our buses, maximize our parking lots, maximize facilities that we had to either turn off, or dial way back for the past year will be able to reuse them now at their full potential which will save obviously the airport, frankly, millions of dollars in operating costs and it will speed the employees journey from the parking lot and their work site. It will allow against certain customers to enjoy a better experience out to the airport and it will allow us to prove this concept of sort of remote screening that we think has future applicability to airports all over the US and potentially all over the globe.
Lawrence
That's fascinating. That sounds really exciting and something that I'm sure your travelers and employees will be happy to partake in here in the future. One other aspect from the operation would be interesting to get your insights and I'm sure our listeners and those who are in airport operations around the globe are looking to do similar programs for you is, how you’ve driven adoption by employees, so, either their your employees or contractors and how they interface with travelers coming through asking questions about VeriFly or they're trying to go through an E-gate and how you’ve helped that customer experience.
Chris
Having employees being able to advocate for your new programs is really important, right. Our boys are face to face with customers all the time. So, the first thing I would say is people tend to advocate for things that they identify with and believe in. And so, we obviously allowed employees for their own purposes to enroll in the program early on but by using VeriFly as the foundation for employee access as well has a lot of all of our employees to become familiar with what that system is. We say all the time that we're an airport in our goal was never to board VeriFly, in fact we want it to be a system-wide thing because it'll work better that way. That being said for our employees here in Denver, at least there is some pride of ownership. This was a home-built program, again with day on true partners, but there's a number of members of my team that were given a chance to roll up their sleeves and build something that now has global recognition and I'm picturing a few of them right now that I'm just so proud of, that a year ago didn't know they were going to have a chance to build, something that would be seen around the world. I had that chance earlier in my career with TSA precheck and to this day, I'm proud of that accomplishment and I'm excited as an employer that large number of our employees have now had a chance to be part of something that I think will make a big difference for customers truly around the world.
Scott
We talked about a number of stakeholders, one that I'd love to know a little bit of more about is around the Health Department's and how they were engaged in when they got engaged in the discussions.
Chris
That's a really great question. In aviation, we tend to be focused on federal regulators. With COVID, it was probably the most that we've been engaged with our local regulators in a long time including both our State Department of Health and our local City Department of Health. And I will tell you that both those entities were involved very early on in VeriFly. We introduced them to it in the first couple weeks that we were going live and both those entities have felt that this was one of the strongest things we've been able to do to ensure customer safety and confidence coming through the airport environment.
Lawrence
You mentioned being a first mover and there's a lot of pride with being that first-mover, no matter whether it's in aviation or across industries. There are airports out there that admire what you've done at Denver International and I want to give you a chance to share some of those insights and advice that you've learned as a first mover to either don't make the mistake I made or these are the things that really set us up for success moving forward.
Chris
It's not easy to be a first mover, right, because there's a whole lot of people that can be skeptical. You always will have people hoping you do well, and you'll always have some that are looking to see you fall on your face. So, the first thing that I would say is you have to be really self-aware and you have to be somewhat self-critical. I've been a part of thousands and thousands of terrible ideas. And I've been part of a couple really good ones and there's probably been a dozen that I didn't know. So, I tried and failed. And so, I would just say what step one is a critical enough that you're not going to just put your airport or your entities name on everything right. There’s some things you don't want to be the first mover on. Once you've identified something that you want to move forward on, then you have to be thick-skinned. You have to push, you have to be willing for someone to prove you wrong. You might be at a point where you think you’re a hundred percent right. You still might be wrong. You've got to be willing to go that far and let it happen. You’ve got to reevaluate along the way and you’ve got to be willing to change course if necessary. And you’ve got to be willing to recognize that great solutions may persist for decades or for months depending on what the need is. And so, how do you make sure that whatever you're building your being open-minded enough to believe that it could last forever in the airline industry. We say pull chocks, meaning quit, then you do that or if you evolve you do that. I don't know whose expression this is but it's the expression, “if it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing”. I don't know whose that expression is, but I know it's not mine, but it's true. If doing something new was easy, then it probably isn't actually new. It's probably been done somewhere else already. So be willing to do the hard thing and be patient enough and persistent enough to push through. Again, with enough self-awareness to pull back, if it turns out you're wrong, sometimes you're going to be.
Scott
Thank you, Chris for offering your insights today. We believe there's a phase approach for the safe and seamless traveler journey vision and two critical stakeholders that we talked about today were the travel providers and the technology providers too. In our report, we have outlined the path forward for the near term and long term for government travel providers and technology stakeholders.
Lawrence
Yeah, and it feels as though we only scratched the surface in this conversation, and we can probably talk about this for hours. One thing we touched on lately is around that government collaboration and you spoke briefly about TSA in this new program coming up that we can talk more about it, but also the public perception in which we touched on lately, and it's very interesting and we're all curious. Those of you who are listening today, feel free to let us know about the areas that are of interest to you to hear more about. If you’d like to share those thoughts or any questions that you’d have that we discussed today. Please feel free to write to us at Oliver Wyman post on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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