Urban-Air Port teams up with major brand partnerships to deliver ‘world-class’ experience at its Air One hub for eVTOLs and delivery drones

Urban-Air Port has announced mul­ti­ple new part­ner­ships with retail and food and bev­er­age brands as it aims to deliv­er a ‘world-class’ cus­tomer expe­ri­ence at the world’s first hub for fly­ing taxis and deliv­ery drones, which is due to open in Coven­try next month.

Air One – backed by the UK Gov­ern­ment, Super­nal and Coven­try City Coun­cil – will form a blue­print for more than 200 sim­i­lar sites planned by Urban-Air Port across the world in the next five years as air taxis and autonomous deliv­ery drones become a real­i­ty.

The part­ners – includ­ing Anatomie, Bot­te­ga S.p.A, Eurest (part of Com­pass Group), LG Busi­ness Solu­tions, Moth­er and Paul & Shark – have teamed up with Urban-Air Port to help deliv­er its vision of cre­at­ing a des­ti­na­tion for trav­ellers to dis­cov­er and engage with brands in new ways while vis­it­ing the company’s ver­ti­port hubs. The all-new con­sumer offer­ing will fall under the company’s new retail and F&B brand, ‘Urban-Air Choice’.

Ricky Sand­hu, Founder and Exec­u­tive Chair­man of Urban-Air Port, said: “Once com­plete, Air-One – the world’s first ful­ly oper­a­tional hub for fly­ing taxis and deliv­ery drones – will spark into life an entire­ly new world of afford­able, zero-emis­sion and con­ges­tion-free trav­el. How­ev­er, this is not just about get­ting from A to B, it’s about the jour­ney itself.

“Air-One is so much more than a land­ing pad for fly­ing taxis and deliv­ery drones. It will deliv­er a world-class inter­ac­tive cus­tomer expe­ri­ence – one that can be repli­cat­ed right across the world as we build our net­work of over 200 sites glob­al­ly.

“The part­ner­ships announced today with some of the biggest brands in retail and F&B – and the invest­ment made by them to par­tic­i­pate in the launch of Air-One – rep­re­sent a huge vote of con­fi­dence in our future vision and the oppor­tu­ni­ties it will bring for con­sumers and brands alike.” 

Urban-Air Port has amassed a group of like-mind­ed brands to deliv­er this future-fac­ing cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. These include:

• Anatomie – Hybrid fash­ion brand and pio­neer of Lux­u­ry Ath­leisure which is car­ried in over 400 stores glob­al­ly includ­ing resorts, spas and air­ports. Its per­for­mance sports­wear, engi­neered for com­fort, focus­es on reduc­ing the car­bon foot­print of trav­ellers and will be show­cased at Air-One.
• Bot­te­ga S.p.A – Pro­duces and sells award-win­ning Ital­ian food and bev­er­age prod­ucts in more than 140 coun­tries and in some of the world’s most recog­nised duty-free shops and air­lines. It will be show­cas­ing its prod­ucts at Air-One.
• Eurest, part of Com­pass Group – The largest con­tract food­ser­vice com­pa­ny in the world, employ­ing over 500,000 peo­ple glob­al­ly. Eurest will be Urban-Air Port’s oper­at­ing part­ner for the on-site café, apply­ing the company’s exper­tise to help devel­op the menu.
• LG Busi­ness Solu­tions – Pro­vid­ing on-site tech­nol­o­gy in pub­lic spaces such as inter­ac­tive screens that will host brand cam­paigns and bring prod­ucts to life for con­sumers in new and high­ly inter­ac­tive ways.
• Moth­er – A UK-based leader in ‘smart vend­ing’ tech­nol­o­gy, pro­vid­ing a best-in-class unmanned retail expe­ri­ence. Mother’s equip­ment will be used to pro­vide prod­ucts on demand and even act as ‘click & col­lect’ col­lec­tion points at future unmanned drone hubs.
• Paul & Shark – a sus­tain­abil­i­ty-focused lux­u­ry Ital­ian cloth­ing brand with over 28 stores world­wide. At Air-One, it will be show­cas­ing its fash­ion lines and sus­tain­abil­i­ty projects as well as dis­play­ing fur­ni­ture made from recy­cled tex­tiles.

Urban-Air Port has a clear vision to unlock a future ‘lifestyle retail expe­ri­ence’ that inte­grates retail effort­less­ly into trav­ellers’ phys­i­cal jour­ney from A to B via a uni­fy­ing smart­phone app. This sin­gle app will enable trav­ellers to plan their jour­ney, engage with brands asso­ci­at­ed with Urban-Air Choice and seam­less­ly inte­grate with oth­er forms of trans­port.

For exam­ple, some­one could rent an e‑scooter, trav­el to an Urban-Air Port, take an air taxi across a city, order a cof­fee on route and have it wait­ing at an Urban-Air Café at their des­ti­na­tion, all con­trolled from the palm of their hand.

Each Urban-Air Port pas­sen­ger lounge will be an entire­ly new type of space. A frac­tion of the size of a tra­di­tion­al air­port ter­mi­nal, it will cre­ate a unique retail expe­ri­ence by expos­ing con­sumers to brands in nov­el and engag­ing ways, such as inter­ac­tive screens and virtual/augmented real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy, rather than per­ma­nent bricks and mor­tar shops.

The approach enables brands to remain agile, host­ing inter­ac­tive cam­paign-spe­cif­ic con­tent at oppor­tune times, rather than expen­sive long-term shop fronts. This enables them to engage the right audi­ences, with the right mes­sages, in the right place at the right time.

All brands and prod­ucts will also be acces­si­ble through Urban-Air Port’s app, mean­ing the retail expe­ri­ence extends fur­ther than just the cus­tomers’ vis­it to the phys­i­cal site. Con­sumers then have the option to order prod­ucts direct­ly to their homes or even have them deliv­ered via drone to their local Urban-Air Port or City­Box drone deliv­ery hub, or ready to be ‘vend­ed’ by Mother’s smart vend­ing machines using a col­lec­tion code.

This vision is being spear­head­ed by two lead­ers in the trav­el retail and F&B indus­try. Kei­th Hunter, Chief Retail Offi­cer, has both led and con­sult­ed on retail oper­a­tions for major trans­port hubs and leisure brands includ­ing Alpha Air­ports Group, Warn­er Leisure Hotels, and Qatar Air­ways. Nicholas God­dard-Palmer, Chief Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Offi­cer, is a fel­low of the Insti­tute of Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and brings over 25 years of expe­ri­ence includ­ing as CEO of Del­hi Duty-Free and Vice Pres­i­dent of F&B at QDF for Qatar Air­ways.

Hunter said: “Urban-Air Port’s ver­ti­ports are unlock­ing an entire­ly new sec­tor with­in the trav­el indus­try – zero-emis­sion elec­tric air mobil­i­ty. With that comes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op an entire­ly nov­el con­sumer expe­ri­ence, an expe­ri­ence that allows peo­ple to inter­act with brands and ser­vices like nev­er before and – through our app – con­tin­ue that expe­ri­ence beyond the ter­mi­nal.

“This gives our cus­tomers absolute flex­i­bil­i­ty and con­trol over every aspect of their jour­ney and any ser­vices they require, per­fect­ly com­ple­ment­ing their lifestyle needs. It’s a phe­nom­e­nal oppor­tu­ni­ty for con­sumers and brands alike.”

God­dard-Palmer added: “Coven­try is just the start. With the sup­port of our new brand part­ners, it gives us the plat­form to show­case what can be deliv­ered in this new forum and opens the door for a whole new world of retail and F&B by cre­at­ing unique expe­ri­ences across the Urban-Air Choice suite of ser­vices, which is key to the deliv­ery of our non-aero­nau­ti­cal strat­e­gy.”

The urban air mobil­i­ty mar­ket is fore­cast­ed to grow by nine per cent annu­al­ly, reach­ing $1 tril­lion in the next 20 years^[i]. Com­mer­cial flights are expect­ed to begin this decade, includ­ing Supernal’s fly­ing taxi which enters com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in 2028.

Accord­ing to McK­in­sey, some flight oper­a­tors could see pas­sen­ger num­bers reach 70,000 per day as ear­ly as 2030^[ii], while Urban-Air Port pre­dicts its glob­al pas­sen­ger num­bers could reach up to 28 mil­lion a year in the next five years, cre­at­ing an enor­mous new mar­ket for retail and F&B, that will be worth mil­lions of dol­lars for brands and part­ners as the net­work of Urban-Air Ports expands.

From April 28th to May 15th, Air One will be open to the pub­lic, with tours pro­vid­ed by the Urban-Air Port team. Updates can be found at www.urbanairport.com.