Snooze in a holding pattern
Thanks to ‘‘sleeping pods’’, transiting passengers can now grab some shuteye at the airport.
FACED WITH a cross-continent voyage from their home in eastern Finland to a Turkish holiday resort, Hanna Nuutinen and husband Tuomo Hakkarainen were confronted with a common parenting quandary: how to fit in a nap.
‘‘Our daughter will soon turn 3 and we were thinking, ‘ How do we handle this’?’’ says Nuutinen, a 32-year-old career adviser. The solution came in the form of Helsinki Airport’s latest passenger feature, a designer sleeping pod the size of a large bath tub, complete with a blind to conceal the occupant, a charging point for phones and a luggage compartment under the cocoon’s reclining seat.
With more people transiting between flights on intercontinental trips, their body clocks often wildly out of sync with local time, a new range of air-side sleeping options has sprung up to offer guaranteed shut eye from as little as US$10 (about NZ$13).
Helsinki, where millions change planes each year en route between Western Europe and cities including Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo, last month became the third airport after Abu Dhabi and Dubai to install GoSleep Pods, 1.8m by 0.6m capsules in which the weary can snooze in light- and sound-proof comfort.
For Nuutinen and Hakkarainen, the pods offered the isolation needed to help their daughter Nea drop off for a half hour while they waited to board their flight.
‘‘This is part of developing as a hub,’’ says Heikki Koski, vicepresident for passenger management at Finavia Oyj, the owner of Helsinki Airport.
‘‘We have to serve those customers who simply want good access to the gates, travellers who want to shop, families – and people who need a nap.’’
Products such as the GoSleep Pod have matured beyond mere gimmicks after the rise of hubs such as Dubai International, whose business models revolve around attracting transit passengers.
In Helsinki, some 2.5 million passengers used the airport to transit between flights in 2014, up 100,000 from a year earlier. Finnair Oyj has sought to boost its share of the lucrative long-haul travel market by encouraging people to choose its hub to connect with the shortest possible European flights to Northeast Asia.
Following a trial two years ago, Helsinki Airport has 19 permanent pods and may add more depending on demand, Koski says. The capsules are a simpler and less costly alternative to the air-side hotels on offer at some other terminals, he says.
Typical customers in Helsinki are transfer passengers who use the capsules for one to two hours between flights, or people faced with disruptions or delays. A handful of pods will come free through the northern spring to encourage people to experiment with them, and the rest will cost (about NZ$13) an hour.
Other hubs in Asia, Europe and the United States are interested in the product, says Jussi Piispanen, its co-inventor, who reckons the company will install between 500 and 1000 this year
In addition to its GoSleep pods, Dubai also offers 10 socalled Snooze Cubes, which are larger at almost 2.4m by 2.8m and pitched as ‘‘micro hotel rooms’’. The boxes, made in New Zealand, are decorated with full-height photos of holiday destinations, with ceilings showing a blue sky and clouds.
Although the comforts of bed have an obvious appeal to the travel-weary, airports have competing priorities – a sleeping passenger is ultimately of less financial value than a wide-awake one able to eat and shop.
Even for a passenger, it’s a benefit that may not outweigh other considerations, such as the draw of a discounted ticket.
‘‘It’s easier to travel with a child if there are proper places to have a nap,’’ Nuutinen says. ‘‘But these beds wouldn’t determine our choice of airport.’’