INTHEBLACK June 2026 - Magazine - Page 23
“Airports face challenges that most businesses do not. They operate as public
infrastructure, they are commercially regulated and they must make 30-year
capital commitments in markets that can swing sharply in a single year.”
VARUN SAXENA, YCP
ELITE DESTINATION AIRPORTS IN SINGAPORE AND HONG KONG
Australia’s airports can learn from leading APAC counterparts that successfully balance profit, service excellence
and public value.
CHANGI AIRPORT
This award-winning Singapore airport operates less
as a transport hub and more as a combined retail,
hospitality and entertainment precinct. YCP’s
Varun Saxena says Changi’s Jewel complex, built
around the world’s tallest indoor waterfall, attracts
about 80 million visitors a year. “It is the playbook,
along with Hong Kong’s SKYTOPIA shopping and
entertainment precinct: non-aeronautical revenue
streams that run independently of the flight cycle.”
With a carefully curated mix of luxury and local brands
as well as dining, passengers tend to arrive early and
stay longer at the airport by choice, increasing dwell
time and spending. Saxena says that by delivering an
integrated airport-city experience, Changi cultivates
loyalty, generates enormous non-aeronautical revenue
and enhances Singapore’s brand as a global gateway.
HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
As one of the world’s busiest airports, Saxena says
the success of Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA)
rests on three pillars: a natural geographic advantage
as a transit and cargo hub, financial autonomy
and a commercial strategy that treats infrastructure
as a revenue platform, not just a cost centre.
The hub airport and its anchor airline, Cathay Pacific,
are symbiotic: one provides the network gravity and
the other the infrastructure. Saxena says
Cathay Pacific's long-haul network fills HKIA with
premium transfer traffic, while the airport’s scale
and facilities keep Cathay Pacific competitive. “You see
this replicated in Dubai (Emirates), Changi (Singapore
Airlines) and Istanbul (Turkish Airlines). The hub is not
built by infrastructure alone, it is built by networks,”
he says. “The best airports understand this asymmetry
and structure incentives accordingly.”
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