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Airports Picks Smart Technologies to Enhance Restrooms Experience

TRAX Analytics

September 14, 2021

Airports adopting ‘smart’ technologies, such as sensors and automatic locks, are finding they can cut costs in managing restroom facilities. A growing number of airports are deploying similar automatic technologies to improve the cleanliness of the restrooms while ensuring higher customer satisfaction and lower operating costs.

One of the most notable upgrades is that of TRAX Analytics system. Airports adopting smart restroom system find it easier to keep a foot count of the visitors, get customer feedback, and even alert the supervisors whenever required.

Following the suit of Houston Airport System, many other airports in the United States like Atlanta, New York, Dallas, San Jose and Tampa have approved and employed analytics system to turnaround the standards of maintenance.

What makes a Restroom a ‘Smart’ Restroom?

Smart airports are the ones that coexist with technologies like GISP and IoT in order to digitally support and perform operations like passenger flows, staff duties, staff activities, etc. One of the most important component of a ‘smart’ airport is a ‘smart’ restroom.

It is known that over 80% of the passengers judge the maintenance of an airport by the looks and feel of its restroom.

The components that generally make a restroom ‘smart’ are:

Optimizing refills – So that there’s no shortage of towels or soap at any time.
Maintenance notifications – Airport employees or restroom custodians now don’t need to check if anything is needed or falling short in the restroom. All they need to do is attend to the call of notification on their smart devices or wearables.
Monitoring presence – To avoid queues in general, or even know when a cubicle is free or taken, smart devices can help determine the right time to go to the restroom.
Reporting non-permitted activities – By detecting non-permitted activities in certain area, smart restroom can alert whenever there is smoke in the area.
Smart Restrooms can also notify whenever the bins are full so that can be taken care of.
Predictive analytics can be provided by smart restrooms based on real time information being monitored.

Shocking Statistics

According to a report by Airport Councils International, 2017, the cleanliness of restrooms counts as the most important satisfaction metric relating to an airport’s infrastructure. The other factors include airport’s ambience, cleanliness of its terminals, and availability of restrooms.

Benefits of Smart Restrooms

A growing number of airports have found ways to cut their custodial costs by improving environmental safety in restrooms; increasing operational efficiency and capacity utilization – leading to an overall reduction in resource consumption.
Airports will be able to monitor visitor traffic throughout facilities using motion detectors; cameras that record when fixtures are used; and heat sensors or footfall statistics for outdoor areas.
A central data collection system also provides information on water use for each fixture including its location, user count, and more.
It reduces time spent by custodians on cleaning tasks including sweeping and mopping by using a demand based approach; it also monitors waste levels to optimize garbage disposal, and reduce water consumption.
Airports deploying restroom solutions help improve hygiene are reducing costs in managing restroom facilities as well as other non-core assets across the airport.