Find your way at Copenhagen Airport

2013-04-04 — /travelprnews.com/ — A nice glass of wine at Le Sommelier, a new dress at Malene Birger or perhaps half an hour with your children in the play area. And then off to your gate in Pier A. But where is gate A23 actually, and how long does it take to get there? Now, you can easily find the answers to all those questions. As the first airport in the world, Copenhagen Airport is developing a new functionality for PCs and mobile phones that allows you to visualise your trip through the airport – all the way from the Metro station or the carpark past the facilities in the terminals you would like to visit before you go to your gate.

Overview. This is a brief description of our new wayfinding tool that will help passengers find their way through the many square metres at Copenhagen Airport. The tool will show 360-degree photo panoramas of all the passenger areas – all the way from you arrive at the Metro station or the carpark and through to your gate. Using this new service you can either get an overview at home on your PC or on your smartphone when you arrive at the airport. On your mobile phone, you just need to open the free CPH Airport app, which will then position you by means of the hundreds of wifi access points in the terminals.

Your personal guide through Copenhagen Airport
“It is important to us that our customers can quickly and comfortably find their way through the airport, and that it is easy for them to get an overview of which shops, eateries and other facilities we offer,” said Karen Bender, E-commerce & Marketing Director for Copenhagen Airports. “We are proud of our airport and the wide range of shops and restaurants we offer in the shopping area. With our new wayfinding service, we can help passengers find their way to the facilities they want to visit before they receive easy and simple directions on how to get to their gate.

The first airport in the world to introduce this service
Copenhagen Airport is the first airport in the world to offer this service, which is expected to be of great benefit to different types of passengers. “I expect that other airports will soon follow suit and develop something like our wayfinding tool, as it will greatly benefit many passengers,” said Karen Bender. She added: “This goes both for passengers who only travel infrequently and who will greatly benefit from the additional comfort of being able to see and plan their way through the airport from home, and for passengers who travel frequently and who can use the app to choose which places they want to visit in the terminals without having to worry about whether they will be able to get to their gate in time.”

Frequent updates
The technicalities of the tool are quite simple: The entire airport has been photographed in great detail with a special camera that takes 360-degree photos around itself. The photos are then stitched together using special software. This results in an exact photographic representation of the entire airport similar to the “street view” function of Google Maps. The photos will be updated several times a year when changes occur, for instance to shop locations.

The online tool is being developed in four language versions: Danish, Swedish, English and, as a new feature at Copenhagen Airport, also in Chinese to cater to the growing numbers of Chinese passengers visiting Denmark. The web version is ready for use in Danish and English, and you can find it here. The mobile version is in the pipeline and will be integrated in the CPH Airport app for iPhones and Androids later this spring. You can download the app in advance here.