Benoy Aviation Design Director Outlines Guest-Centric Methodology for FBO and General Aviation Facilities
Why It MattersThe approach signals a shift in FBO and GA facility design toward data-driven guest-persona mapping integrated with operational planning across airport infrastructure projects.
Peter Farmer, Design Director for Aviation at Benoy, has set out the firm's methodology for designing Fixed Base Operation (FBO) and General Aviation (GA) facilities, arguing that guest experience and operational efficiency should be treated as interdependent rather than competing priorities. Farmer, who has delivered FBO projects in the UK, Europe, the Middle East and South America over more than 35 years of international airport work, contends that an FBO or GA facility is fundamentally a guest-focused operation distinct from a conventional passenger terminal, despite sharing many functional components.
Central to Benoy's approach is a guest touch-point mapping process run alongside operational mapping. It begins with defining user demographics and target guest personas, individual and group, used to produce a journey touch-point service standard map charting each step of the guest experience and its touch points, needs and opportunities, which is then overlaid on an operational functional map. Farmer notes that designing for the average traveller is no longer sufficient, as guests increasingly expect personalised and authentically sustainable experiences, and that groups frequently behave as collections of individuals rather than a consensus, requiring granular, data-rich guest profiling.
The methodology has been applied on a Benoy project in North-Western India, where various architectural expressions were explored to meet the spatial, operational and guest touch-point brief, and on a project in West Africa, where a broad range of guest typologies required detailed user-profile analysis extending to staff and other users. Farmer also highlights that technology should support rather than substitute genuine face-to-face service, that operational adjacencies are critical for running a facility to a high standard with minimal staff, and that material selection, layout and detailing must support ease of maintenance to sustain guest experience quality well beyond opening day.
