Biometric Bag-Drop Adoption

Automation, Security, and the Future of the Airport Lobby

Research Design

  • Large-scale quantitative survey (n ≈ 1,000) measuring awareness, understanding, and usage of Touchless ID

  • In-depth interviews examining how travelers reason about effort, trust, and assistance near security

  • Diary studies and on-site observations capturing bag-drop decisions in real, security-adjacent contexts

Overview

Across multiple studies of the day-of-travel experience, one pattern emerged consistently: security exerts outsized influence on how travelers experience the entire journey.

Before leaving home, security shapes planning—when travelers depart, how much buffer they build in, and how confident they feel. At the airport, security introduces real unpredictability: wait times fluctuate, procedures vary, and communication is often limited. What happens at security does not stay there; it colors everything that follows.

As biometric technologies expanded beyond security into the lobby—specifically into bag drop—the promise was clear: remove friction from one of the most consequential transitions in the journey.

Yet adoption told a different story. While travelers readily embraced Touchless ID at security, uptake at bag drop lagged behind expectations.

This study examined why.

The Problem

Bag drop sits at a critical junction in the journey: immediately upstream of security, where delays feel costly and mistakes feel consequential.

At this point, travelers are handling personal belongings, making last-minute adjustments, and deciding how much responsibility to take on themselves versus delegating to the system. Unlike security screening—which is standardized, compulsory, and institutionally framed—bag drop presents a choice.

That choice proved difficult to interpret.

Early data showed that awareness alone did not explain adoption gaps:

  • Most travelers knew Touchless ID existed

  • Far fewer understood that it applied to bag drop

  • Fewer still recognized it as a substitute for agent-mediated ID checks

This was not rejection of automation. It was uncertainty about how automation fit into a security-adjacent moment already defined by risk.

In a space where errors threaten downstream consequences, effortlessness without clear support can read as exposure rather than empowerment. The problem, then, was not technical feasibility or biometric trust—but how automation was being understood at a moment when orientation mattered most.

Insights: Automation Under the Shadow of Security

Security Changes How Automation Is Read

At security, Touchless ID is brief, standardized, and institutionally bounded. The traveler’s role is clear: comply, proceed, move on.

Bag drop operates under different conditions. Travelers are preparing for security, not past it. In this context, automation is evaluated less on speed than on whether it preserves support and orientation as travelers approach a high-stakes transition.

Efficiency Was Experienced as Assurance

When travelers spoke about “efficiency,” they rarely meant speed alone. They meant confidence that the process would work—and that help would be available if it didn’t.

Near security, assistance—human or system-based—was experienced as protection, not friction. Automation that did not visibly account for failure scenarios felt risky rather than freeing.

Misrecognition, Not Skepticism, Drove Non-Use

Awareness of Touchless ID enrollment was high, but understanding of its application at bag drop was much lower.

Travelers were not questioning biometrics themselves. They were uncertain about the situation:

  • When does this apply?

  • What happens if it fails?

  • Who intervenes if something goes wrong?

In a security-adjacent space, unanswered questions were enough to stall adoption.

Autonomy Required Acknowledgment

Even experienced travelers looked for small cues that they were seen and supported: a marked lane, an agent’s glance, confirmation that they were in the right place.

Travelers wanted to move independently, but not invisibly—especially before security. Where acknowledgment was missing, ease felt isolating rather than empowering.

Habit Formed Through Successful Use

Once travelers successfully used Touchless ID at bag drop, deliberation often diminished.

Repeat usage correlated more strongly with prior experience than with loyalty status. Touchless ID became a default through embodied success—confidence earned by having it work when it mattered.

Quantitative patterns reinforced this:

  • 87% awareness of Touchless ID enrollment

  • 34% awareness of bag-drop usage

  • 45% of aware travelers reported always using Touchless bag drop when available

  • 13% chose based on circumstances, highlighting the boundary between habit and context

Adoption followed understanding, not novelty.

Strategic Implications

This work challenged a common assumption in automation design: that reducing effort automatically increases adoption.

In environments shaped by security, automation must preserve agency, orientation, and recovery. Travelers are willing to delegate—but not blindly, and not at moments where mistakes feel costly.

Near-term implications focused on restoring intelligibility at a security-adjacent moment:

  • Clearer wayfinding to Touchless-enabled bag-drop stations

  • Messaging that clarified when and how Touchless ID applied

  • Agent prompts that invited travelers into the option rather than bypassing them

More broadly, the research surfaced a strategic tension shaping the future of the lobby. The question is no longer whether bag drop should become more self-service, but how automation should be introduced without amplifying security-related uncertainty.

As hubs expand and lobby configurations evolve, automation will increasingly shape how travelers distribute responsibility between themselves and the system. This research suggests that automation succeeds not by disappearing, but by remaining legible—especially where security concentrates risk.