Via Guide GmbH
Integrated Passenger Flow Management
Via Guide is the one-stop shop for all passenger flow concerns at airports. With its high quality products and innovative solutions, Via Guide has become the market leader in European Airports. Our solutions include physical passenger guidance, monitoring and controlling the passenger flow. With these solutions, airports can improve the efficiency and the service quality of their passenger flow.
Via Guide’s in-house production facilities and product development enable us to provide our customers with technologically sophisticated and proven solutions. This includes implementation of customer requirements and customized versions. The excellent quality of our products is a guarantee of a high value and function stability even under extreme conditions.
With our technology partner Qmetrix – a specialist in sensor technologies and data handling – we provide simple-to-use applications for passenger flow monitoring and passenger flow control. Qmetrix’s expertise includes integrating third party data, database knowledge and real-time data. Their goal is having powerful and fast algorithms to calculate real-time KPI with high accuracy.
Company Profile
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Passenger Flow Guidance
Beltrac
The optimal design of a waiting queue creates a positive, organized impression at passengers and enables high efficiency and significantly shortens perceived waiting times. Our passenger guidance systems are user friendly and easy to handle. They offer enhanced security, confidentiality procedures, simpler control and monitoring as well as an immediate visualization.
The Beltrac post is the leading edge in designing waiting queues. It is a 4-way post with an extraction of the belt strap and three ports on a single post. The tube is a one-piece aluminium extrusion with our patented „dovetail“ grooves for attaching and extension with accessories to customized interior walls (Nextrac). The belt mechanism is the most durable on the market. It consists of the long-life stainless steel tension spring, the belt made of durable abrasion resistant Polyester fabric, the universal belt-end working with most other manufacturers’ stanchions and the belt retractor using advanced visco-rotational damper for a controlled belt retraction. Our mounting options allow for quick and easy setup (mobile post) or for a stable queue with reduced installation efforts with a magnetic base.
Nextrac
Using dividing walls at queue perimeters create defined queue entrances and exits, and separates passengers from each other (e.g. business vs economy).
From the combination of Beltrac post and their different mounting options with Beltrac Crossbar straight barriers or filling elements as acrylic glass, aluminium composite panels or banners, areas can easily be blocked of with low installation effort. The elements can also be used for advertisement in the queue. Integrated doors can be installed for convenience or safety purposes.
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Passenger Flow Monitoring
Measuring and monitoring the passenger flow help to identify operational bottlenecks, supervise the operational performance 24/7 and guide passengers actively to less used service areas. Additionally, the gathered data is the perfect source for history based forward planning.
Wireless Queue Monitoring
This solution provides a very simple way to calculate queue KPI in real-time. The main advantage of this system is simplicity in the installation and the operation. Studies show, that the KPI achieve an accuracy of 96%.Our Wireless Queue Sensors (WQI) are positioned at strategic positions within the queue. The WQI is an infrared sensor, which is powered by a rechargeable battery with a lifetime of 6-8 months. The sensors is seamlessly integrated into a Beltrac post, counts persons directionally and measures their speed. An antenna collects the data from the sensors and transmits them to our web servers. There, the single sensor data are analysed and calculated to queue KPI, like access rates, throughput rates, filling levels and waiting times. On our analytics platform, there are many standard reports available to analyse the performance of the observed queues.
Queue Monitoring
With this solution, queue KPI can be measured without the need of a stable queue using our ceiling based sensors, which have a counting accuracy of more than 98%.
The proven hardware for this is the Qmetrix Ranging Sensor (QRS). This laser sensor identifies persons, counts or tracks in the observed area with a high accuracy. Compared to camera technologies, the QRS is not affected by light, shadows or reflections.
Additionally, our expertise in integrating third party data create the possibility to replace sensors or to improve the accuracy. The integration of third party data – like e-gates, boarding pass scanners or metal detectors – and our sophisticated algorithms, allow that sensors only need to be positioned at strategic positions, so that the number of sensors can be reduced enormously. Then the queue KPI are calculated based on statistical methods. In the meantime, this is a proven concept at different European airports.
Capacity Monitoring
Avoiding overcrowded terminals and corridors or selling free seats of a lounge to other airlines. This can all be achieved by knowing the real-time occupancy in real-time.
When using the Qmetrix Ranging Sensor (QRS) and/or third party data of entrances and exits, these occupancies KPI can be achieved with an accuracy of more than 99%.
Service Flow Monitoring
Determining KPI of service processes help to identify operational bottlenecks and the usage of service positions, like information desks or check-in counters.
Our specially designed sensor detects persons at the desks, counts the number of transactions, the process duration and the throughput rate.
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Passenger Flow Control
Queue Control
This solution changes the queue layouts automatically by using our revolving Smart Gate. That guarantees stable and reproducible queue layouts and improve the efficiency.
The Smart Gate is integrated into a Beltrac post and has one or two blades, which guide passengers through the queue. The gates are triggered either by manual remote control or automatically by the filling level, measured with one of our monitoring solutions.
The blades turn with a speed of 2 seconds per 45°. The gate are battery powered with a lifetime of approx. 3,600 opening cycles.
Flow Control
Flow Control helps to reduce idle times between two passengers at service points and helps passengers finding their positions. This increases efficiency and the service quality.
At each position, sensors determine the status of a position (full or empty) or the filling level of a mini queue (e.g. in front of the security lane). This status is the trigger for the screen at the end of the queue, which displays the next available position to the passenger. Additionally, station lights above the position show their status (free, busy, and available).
The system prioritises passengers of priority lanes and dedicates the positions to the regular queue, when the priority passengers have been served. This and the reduced idle times between two passengers increase the efficiency enormously.
