Frankfurt International Airport
The Airport City That Wants to Be the New Model for Meetings and Knowledge Sharing
has been expanding over the last decade into a self-described “airport city” to meet growing passenger demand, expected to jump from 61 million people today to as high as 73 million by 2021.
The airport city concept is gaining traction in numerous large gateway destinations around the world from Dallas to Doha. However, the consensus today is that these airports cannot maintain competitive advantage by the size of their infrastructure and volume of connectivity alone, due to the continual buildup of so many airports in today’s major markets.
That’s according to the House of Logistics & Mobility (HOLM) at Frankfurt Airport. The think tank is attempting to help Europe’s third busiest gateway also evolve — beyond just its infrastructure growth — into an advanced-industry knowledge cluster and high-tech business incubator.
The end goal is three-fold. One mandate is to drive more stopover traffic for business travelers and conference delegates into Frankfurt airport by providing a heightened value proposition relating to better networking and knowledge sharing opportunities. The second is to position the Frankfurt airport city as one of the world’s leading knowledge hubs in the logistics and mobility industry. The third is to position the entire Frankfurt Rhine-Main metropolitan area as a leading business capital for people and businesses in motion in the on-demand economy.
“The city of the future is an international, interdisciplinary knowledge-sharing machine,” Dr. Stefan Walter told me in 2011 when I first visited HOLM. Back then he was the managing director of the facility, but he has since moved on to consultancy work.
Dr. Walter explained that the global knowledge economy is grounded in the quality of so many different cities’ transportation networks, most notably their airports. In Frankfurt’s case, however, he said the fast-growing U.A.E. carriers (Emirates and Etihad) have been encroaching on Frankfurt-based Lufthansa’s dominance along many of its international routes for years. Therefore, that increasing competitiveness encroaches on the airport’s ability not just to fill seats, but to drive competitive advantage to the city in general.
“Dubai is trying to become the node between Asia and South America, which is affecting the future of logistics and mobility on a global scale,” Dr. Walter told me. “So this is about finding the strengths of our strengths, our core competencies, and for Germany, that’s knowledge and infrastructure. It’s also about connecting ideas.”
The infrastructure part of the equation has been established. The airport opened a fourth runway in 2011 to support the massive new CargoCity facility. Adjacent to the airport, THE SQUAIRE is a sleek conference, hotel and office complex that opened in 2012, positioned as a self-contained “New Work City.” Following that, the Gateway Gardens mixed-use community opened with more hotels, more office space, more R&D facilities, and the new HOLM building and conference space. Looking ahead, a third terminal is scheduled to open in 2021.
As for Germany’s other core competency — knowledge and advanced industry expertise — that’s where HOLM fits into the grand scheme of things as hub and central gathering place for the growing logistics and mobility cluster in the region.
“Clusters are geographic concentrations of interconnected companies, specialized suppliers, service providers, and associated institutions in a particular field that are present in a nation or region,” explains Harvard professor Michael Porter, who has informed HOLM’s strategy considerably. “Clusters arise because they increase the productivity with which companies can compete.”
Except complicating matters, he says, sectors are merging into one another due to the rise of technology and rapidly digitizing businesses. Automotive and information technology, for example, are no longer completely different sectors, requiring more enthusiastic sharing on knowledge than ever before.
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