ABSTRACT
Evidence from industry practice shows that best-in-class players are moving away from classical ‘mono-modal’ approaches, where airports struggle between each other and with other modes of transportation to increase the weight of their demand. In fact, these actors are developing new strategic models based on co-evolutionary designs with other transportation solutions. The path of cooperating with a competitor inside its own value proposition, either a direct one or another transport operator, seems effective, most definitely in those environments, like Europe, where airlines compete according to market conditions, whilst other providers, like train operators, are hugely subsidized by their State owners. Here airport enterprises abandon their ‘splendid isolation’ within a country’s logistics package and provide the initial momentum for radical change, or a ‘quantum leap’, towards a multimodal hub approach. The customers’ of multimodal hubs (either passengers or goods) are given the chance to seamlessly connect from air to ground, railway and sea ferry1 within airport boundaries. This integrated and upgraded bundle on offer naturally improves the chances for airports to foster their market power, thanks to the combined use of airport infrastructure, high-speed trains2 and motorways. Best practices, when dealing with European players, refer to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, Frankfurt airport in Frankfurt and Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. The adoption of an intermodal approach has given these sites not only the opportunity to expand their passenger-catchment areas, crossing regional or national borders, but also to increase the weight and
number of business-to-business transactions. FedEx, for instance, chose Paris CDG as its European hub thanks to its superior intermodal infrastructures, a must for logistics and cargo operations.
