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DEPARTURE
LOUNGEOctober 2018 · AV I A T I O N B U S I N E S SWhat is moonshot idea you are in-
trigued by and working toward in
your business?
Paul Griffi ths: The future of airport design
is going to look ver y different from what we
see today. We can’t keep building airports
with massive walking distances that aren’t
customer centric.
There is an opportunity to use tech-
nology to make the future airport
experience much more personalised
and intimate, and get some of these
legacy processes that are been around
for decades too long out of the
customer’s sight.
So immigration processes, security
processes, all of those still need to hap-
pen, but technology will come to our
rescue and make them seamless, quick
and not get in the way of the customer
enjoying the travel experience the way
it used to be. Technology and biomet-
rics as a global standard will play a ma-
jor role in making that possible.
What does diversity mean to you?
PG: Diversity really is absolutely key to
ever ything we do here in Dubai. From
the tens of thousands of people we employ
to ever y person that comes through the
airport, ever yone is from hugely different
backgrounds.
Being CEO of a major airport here,
you have a commercial agenda with the
responsibility of boosting the economy,
but also a social agenda of making abso-
lutely sure you incorporate local people
into your workforce. Not because they
are locals but because you’ve trained
them and developed them to be the best
candidates for the job.
There is also a business case for
diversity because if you are an inter-
national airport ser ving more than
240 destinations globally that come to
Dubai, when you are at the epicenter of
global aviation, you need to understand
how many different cultural practices
there are around the world. So if you
employ people that have different cul-
tural backgrounds from all sorts of plac-
es in the world you’re going to ser ve
the customer. Because if your employee
base is as diverse as your customer
base you have a chance of delivering
some decent ser vice.How do you deal with the pace of
change that now includes fl uctuat-
ing exchange rates, trade wars, tariff s,
a new emerging demographic in the
workplace, and even moving calendars
for instance Ramadan moving into the
May season?
PG: If you’re in aviation you’ve never been
in a stable state. Change has happened in
aviation since 1993. So you have to retain
a degree of fl exibility in your business to
be able to adapt to things that are going to
change. From China alone, I think there are
going to be 1.3 billion incremental annual
passenger journeys by about 2030. So we’re
adapting our infrastructure changing our
technology and changing our processes
all the time.
The other thing of course and this
is I think quite a new phenomenon,
the rate of technical change, process
change, and the things that that tech-
nology is enabling are changing far
faster than ever before. You also can’t
run on your own an enterprise of this
scale and size with so many moving
parts that are changing all the time.
That’s just impossible.
You need people who are really on topof the latest technology and I fi nd that
there are people a lot younger than I am
that are far more up to date with those
changes. And I listen to them ver y care-
fully because they are actually mapping
the future. So you have to delegate. You
have to listen to people who have got
more relevant experience and more up
to date knowledge. Other wise you just
become a dinosaur. And I’m hoping that
I can never be described as a dinosaur.What is the biggest challenge facing
your industry today?
PG: Clearly political turmoil is not good for
the industr y. Rising costs, environmental
concerns, there are a number of things.
But the growth in demand of air travel
over the next decade will also continue
to rise at a faster rate. Have we got the
infrastructure to cope? Can we keep pace
with the demand? That’s going to be the
biggest thing.Do you believe social networking has
impacted your organisation?
PG: Dramatically. Airports before had no
real business to consumer relationship
earlier because our customers were actu-
ally customers of our airline customers.
Now of course we’re able to interact with
ever y single passenger that comes through
Dubai Airports with our superfast Wi-Fi
which we believe is the fastest in the world.
Social media is an absolutely major
part of our customer engagement
strategy and it’s where the majority of
our marketing and social networking
focuses so it’s incredibly important and
it’s transformed our ability to interact
with our customers to get live feedback
of how they’re feeling about the ser-
vices we’re providing.Diversity has a business
case: Dubai Airports CEO
Shayan Shakeel speaks with Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffi ths, who
has helped build the world’s busiest international airport. Making the
right calls early on, and anticipating the future have helped, he says