Acsa must focus on travel facilities, not shopping malls
September 27, 2005
By Renée Bonorchis
Airports the world over are works-in-progress. No sooner has an extra terminal been added or parking facilities extended than more terminals or parking bays are needed.
This is obviously due to the steady increase in the numbers of people wanting to travel by air either within their own country or, increasingly, between countries.
So it should be little surprise that Johannesburg International Airport ran out of parking facilities last weekend just a few short years after the completion of a huge new parking block.
As a 20 percent owner of Airports Company South Africa (Acsa), the Public Investment Corporation will have to come to terms with the implications of this reality, which obviously points to the need for fairly constant investment to match the constant increase in demand for facilities.
Another aspect of Acsa's business that will require constant attention is the increasing tendency for airports to behave as though they were shopping malls with the odd runway attached.
In Acsa's case, this tendency might be heightened by its regulatory environment, which allows for charges to be based on a return on assets calculation.
This means if Acsa builds huge shopping palaces, thereby substantially increasing the asset base, the regulator will allow it to hike its charges to the airlines, which inevitably means you and I pay more for air travel.
Indeed, having shopping facilities at airports is of questionable value, especially for internal air travel. Acsa, as with almost every airport operator, needs to return to a focus on getting passengers through airports as effectively and easily as possible. To do this, they should pay less attention to the retailers and more to such things as the increasingly unpleasant facilities offered by customs.
Hopefully management under the new structure will settle down quickly, but by all accounts Acsa will miss the extremely useful operational input that has been provided by Aeroporti di Roma over the past few years.
Business Report