Favoured by its geographic location at the heart of Europe, Vienna Airport is positioning itself as a major hub to the destinations in Central and Eastern Europe. Vienna Airport recorded 31.7 million passengers in 2019, 17% more than the previous year. Vienna Airport is the largest employer in Austria’s eastern region and has a workforce of more than 22,500.
Highlights
- 12,000 lost property reports per year
- Every 2nd item finds its way back to its owner
- Automatic matching of lost and found reports
- Efficient storage management and dynamic calculation of storage fees
The existing Lost & Found system at Vienna Airports Lost Property Office was replaced by Nova Find, Europe’s leading lost property office solution. Since its successful implementation, every 2nd found item finds its way back to its owner.
Two components lead to success
The new lost property office solution in place at Vienna Airport consists of two components. The back-end system is used by employees of the lost property office to log and manage found items. Passengers and airport customers can make use of the public search mask to register losses.
Public search mask
Passengers and customers can report lost or forgotten items via a modern interface on Vienna Airport’s website. Responsivity enables the submission of reports via smartphone, tablet or desktop computer. The item categories and characteristic descriptions available to the user have been optimised for the airport environment. Lost property reports submitted by users are automatically cross-checked against all found item reports in the database. All items found on the airport premises (Ground Services), on arriving flights or on the City Airport Train are logged in Nova Find by employees of the Lost Property Office. The relevant passenger or customer is notified immediately of a potential match.
The Lost Property Office
The back-end system used by the employees of the lost property office represents the central system and therefore the core of Nova Find. This is where found items are entered into the system, lost property reports reviewed and matching lost and found reports cross-checked against one another. Intelligent configuration enables the customised creation of categories depending on the case in hand so that cross-checking delivers the best possible results.
The system uses these categories to ascertain which lost property report matches a found property report – and vice versa – automatically and independently of the input language. Language-independent input of lost property reports plays a decisive role in communication between passengers and customers and also enhances the quality of data input. Furthermore, extending match comparisons to all participating regions and organisations (e.g. public transport services) significantly increases the return rate.
“The more passengers we handle, the more items are lost or forgotten. The most frequently forgotten items are smartphones and tablets, although we also find three to four passports every day. The return rate has reached 50 per cent since the introduction of Nova Find and is rising continuously. The previous lost and found process was improved in cooperation with RUBICON and has significantly increased the satisfaction of our passengers and naturally that of our employees at the lost property office.“
Martin Kügler, Head of Terminal Operations at Vienna Airport