Terminal D, and soon terminal C, at New York’s La Guardia Airport has recently been remodeled. How? Think iPads. Lots of iPads. OTG Management, the company that runs all the concessions at the airport sprung for the $15 million dollar facelift, which gives travelers access to what looks like rows of cozy library tables and chairs, each with its own iPad. Just punch in your flight number for access to a tablet. In addition to getting flight status updates, you can order food and drinks to be delivered to your seat (see where OTG comes in now?).
OTG Chief Executive Rick Blatstein says he saw boarding-gate areas as an untapped sea of potential customers—lots of people sitting around, unhappy, with money to spend. “You look at people in gate-hold areas and it looks like they are waiting for a root canal.”
When the remodeling project for terminal C finishes up, OTG says there will be 2,000 iPads in rotation. the company has plans for a similar projects in Minneapolis and Toronto, adding 2,500 tablets to each. Somebody needs to do a follow up story in a year, when all the iPads have seen the abuse of millions of greasy finger swipes.
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