1、Building future-ready airport business modelsPhoto by Franz Maybuechen Kearney,DsseldorfWith the pandemic bringing the aviation sector to a standstill,now is the time for service providers to reassess their business models to become more resilient.Transport infrastructurethe backbone of the global e

2、conomyhas undergone phenomenal improvements over the past few decades.Major projects have helped transform the face of the worlds transport infrastruc-ture,including Californias high-speed rail network in the United States,the BeijingShanghai high-speed railway,massive infrastructure programs in Ind

3、ia such as Bharatmala Pariyojana for roads and Sagarmala for ports,Germanys Autobahn-controlled access highway system,and the Beijing Daxing greenfield airport project.The aviation sector in particular has enjoyed tremendous growth.In fact,the number of global city pair connections more than doubled

4、 from 10,000 in 1996 to 23,000 in 2019.During the same period,passenger footfall in airports tripled from 1.5 billion to around 4.5 billion.However,COVID-19 has brought the aviation sector to a grinding halt.External disruptions and catastrophes in the past indicate that the sector is particularly p

5、rone to being severely hit by such events.Demand has taken a significant downturn,which inevitably impacts the supply-side ecosystem and erodes value for service providers,including airlines and airport developers and operators.As a result,there is an urgent need for these service providers to reass

6、ess their business models and explore business diversifica-tion strategies to make themselves more resilient to external shocks.In this paper,we focus on airports,a core element of the aviation value chain.First,we discuss the need to transform the sectors business models,and then,we assess the dive