Plaza Premium Group transforms aviation hospitality industry with innovative digital travel marketplace

The distinct technology connects airport travel products to enhance superior travellers’ experience, as well as increase digital revenue and operational efficiency.

In the airport hospitality industry, extensive fragmentation amongst platforms and service providers complicates travellers' bookings, which leads to a degraded user experience. Travellers are also forced to visit multiple vendors for different services, such as ground transportation, accessibility accommodations, and dining options. This prevents service providers from gaining a holistic understanding of the customer journey, hindering capabilities for sales optimisation.

Realising this issue, Plaza Premium Group (PPG), a leading global airport hospitality services provider developed One Travel Experience Ecosystem (oneTECO), a one-stop-shop digital ecosystem, to address the pain points brought by the fragmented airport business ecosystem. oneTECO is one of the key projects under the group’s US$10m investment in technology. It runs on a flexible and scalable platform that is capable of accommodating the diverse requirements of different airports and passengers.

The solution utilises a microservices-based architecture that leverages a variety of cloud services to optimise speed, security, and scalability. This capability has played a pivotal role in accommodating PPG’s vision to expand to 25 key global travel hubs in the next five years.

Currently, it has been successfully launched and is fully operational at Hong Kong and Bangalore International Airports in just 10 months. Over 80 airports around the world have also onboarded oneTECO, airport passenger services, and aviation lingo for what is otherwise known as meet-and-greet services, in order to provide travellers with a seamless end-to-end airport experience.

Meanwhile, the operations team at Hong Kong International Airport and PPG’s airline partners have noted that customers value having a centralised platform like oneTECO that provides visibility into all the service options available at the airport. In particular, customers enjoy the time-efficient convenience of booking services through a single platform.

oneTECO has also enabled airlines and ground handling agents to upload service requests in bulk to PPG, streamlining operational processes and enhancing overall efficiency.

The company’s milestones with the development of oneTECO has been acknowledged by the HKB Technology Excellence Awards 2024, as PPG brings home the win in the Cloud - Travel Services category. Together with its partners, PPG continues to redefine the future of airport hospitality and make travel better at scale.

“With the continued evolution of oneTECO, PPG is well-positioned to meet the needs of each airport whilst maintaining efficient and scalable operations,” said Prasan Verma, Chief Technology Officer, highlighting the fact that it has established a solid foundation with the end-to-end integrated solution built using cloud-native technologies, significantly reducing the launch timeframe for new airports. In airports, efficiency and accuracy are key, and for the business to optimise manpower planning and timely delivery. In summary, it means a better airport experience.

The prestigious awards programme celebrates innovation and excellence in Hong Kong's dynamic tech landscape, highlighting companies that lead the way in technological disruptions within their industries.