Faced with the task of maximising the commercial revenue at airports, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has decided to appoint a consultant for seven international airports, including Tiruchi, to review and re-design the layout of its existing general retail and food and beverage outlets inside the terminal buildings.
The object was to make optimum use of airport space for passengers’ facilitation and realise the full commercial revenue potential.
Apart from Tiruchi, the other airports under this scheme are Thiruvananthapuram, Lucknow, Guwahati, Goa, Amritsar, and Srinagar.
The Commercial Department of the AAI corporate headquarters has invited quotation from the prospective consultants.
The applicant should have had experience in providing consultancy services in similar work at least in one Indian or foreign airports having passenger movement of two million annually or more.
The consultant would be given four months to carry out the work which would be split into two phases.
The consultant would undertake floor and layout designing besides do overall planning for optimum utilisation of space.
The existing general retail and food and beverages outlets are run by different private agencies at Tiruchi airport recorded a traffic of 10 lakh passengers, mostly overseas travellers, in the last financial year.
Tiruchi, unlike other non-metro international airports, has more overseas flights than domestic operations.
Airport sources said AAI officials would have interaction with the chosen consultant in connection with the redesigning work at Tiruchi airport which would get a new integrated terminal building in a few years from now. The sources said there was a plan to have a single agency for the retail and food and beverage outlets respectively at the Tiruchi airport.
However, this would come after the consultant submitted the re-designed layout, the sources said.