Munich airport: Unpredictable mobility patterns
The Challenge
Airports are hives of activity, but the passengers are only half of it. Every day, thousands of employees scurry about behind the scenes, navigating these huge, sprawling sites to keep everybody moving. Yet few of us realize how much our ability to get where we’re going depends on theirs.
Munich is Germany’s second biggest airport, with some 8,000 employees that crisscross the site daily on their way to meetings or to perform essential duties. Providing for their complex mobility needs is the job of airport operator Munich Airport GMBH. To achieve this, they provided 70 company cars for employees to drive themselves around the site. However, while cars were always fully booked, they were under-utilized, spending a lot of time parked and waiting for return journeys. Clearly, a more sustainable, efficient solution was required.
Like most airports, Munich was designed for planes, not buses, so working out the most direct route for fixed-line transit was always going to be a challenge. And with highly unpredictable employee movements, fixed schedules were out too.
The challenge for Shotl was to find a new way to move employees without raising prices sky-high.
The Solution
We configured a white-label on-demand service called ShuttleMe with three branded minivans and professional drivers. During working hours, airport employees can book a pick-up and drop-off in real-time via the Passenger App from any of the stops covering the entire airport.
We provided the Passenger App, Driver App, Central Control Console, driver training, promotional materials and support. Munich Airport GMBH funded the service and provided vehicles, drivers and branding and promoted the service to employees. A web portal was used for operational management and monitoring.
- Passenger App allows users to book and pay for rides, get real-time pick-up and drop-off updates, and a personalized, flexible service that adapts to their needs, not the other way round.
- Algorithms constantly optimize all passenger bookings and vehicles routes to provide the best possible service for all users.
- Driver App alerts drivers to new bookings in real-time and directs them to dynamic pick- up and drop-off points. The Driver App can also be used to control on-board capacity.
- Dashboard allows transport operators to set service parameters, monitor operations in real time via the Control Panel and get detailed data and analytics on user behavior, taking the guesswork out of getting it right.
