Dubai Airports CEO: Expect Hollywood-Style Tech and Lots of Shopping

Dubai International Airport is big and it’s getting even bigger. “We’re growing faster than any other international airport of comparable size,” said Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, at Skift Global Forum East 2024. 

“But the most important thing: I hope every traveler through our airport has a fantastic experience. The numbers you can’t dispute, and it’s great being the biggest, but I hope we are the best.”

Griffiths heads up an organization that includes Dubai International (DXB) – the city’s primary air gateway – and Dubai World Central (DWC). DXB is due to end 2024 with 91.9 million passengers. Given such high footfall, wait times in the busy Gulf airport can be high, but Griffiths said work is being done to change that.

Dubai Airports already uses facial recognition at its smart gates, which were introduced in 2021. The CEO said the ambition is to roll them out to other areas, albeit over an undisclosed period.

“We’re working out a way to do away with the gates, so you can have facial recognition in crowds, a bit like Minority Report with Tom Cruise. It’s funny how I watch Hollywood movies and see technology that doesn’t exist yet, but we’ll put that in the airport next year. Total Recall, the way they walk through airport security, it’s the idea of non-stop security.

“Most business transformations we witness are when businesses stop and start again. Individual taxis were not an efficient means of transport, so Uber, Lyft, and everyone came in. Amazon, eBay, and so many others have done the same thing. We need to do the same in the airport space.”

The goal is to cut wait times and maximize shopping and retail.

“If we could deliver you to an intimate concourse where your plane is right there, the lounge, the bars, the restaurants. I still want you to come to the airport two hours before, but I don’t want you queuing, I want you to spend one hour and fifty-eight minutes shopping,” quipped Griffiths.

Dubai Airports Chief on ‘World’s Biggest Airport’

Alongside running DXB, Griffiths is also heading the expansion of DWC. Earlier this year, Dubai’s ruler announced a $35 billion expansion for DWC, with hopes of turning it into the world’s biggest airport during the next decade. Once complete, DWC will have five runways, five terminals, and capacity for 260 million passengers. 

Despite plans for an enormous complex, Griffiths suggested that the size of the airport is not the top priority. 

“I don’t want to create the world’s largest airport; I want to recreate the reason I got into travel. I was so besotted with the romance of travel and I thought it was a wonderful experience. Some of the airports that no longer exist were some of the most pleasant because the walking distances were short, they were intimate.

“What I’d like to do is create eight small airports within the space of one large airport and the only thing we share are the runways. The check-in needs to be very compact, you step into a different environment. Your phone would tell you when you’re in the right place [and] with your ticket.

“There’s a huge drive to conceive the new airport to be a 21st if not 22nd-century airport. The devil is in the design. In the future, the pace of technological change will only accelerate.”