Set in the picturesque Southern Lakes district, Queenstown is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s premier tourism destinations and often described as one of the world’s most beautiful places to arrive by air. Serving both domestic and international travellers, Queenstown Airport is an important gateway, however a legacy of ad hoc terminal changes has impacted the overall passenger experience.
Queenstown Airport forecasts an additional 800,000 passengers annually by 2032, necessitating a 15% increase in terminal size over time. This growth in passenger numbers provides the opportunity to upgrade the performance, passenger experience and look-and-feel of the terminal to meet immediate needs.
Jasmax has worked alongside Queenstown Airport since 2019 to deliver significant upgrades, including enlarging the aviation security area to meet updated national security requirements for domestic air travel. To streamline the passenger experience, Jasmax is unifying the terminal’s interior with a cohesive, calming material palette and clear, intuitive wayfinding strategy. Additional upgrades to back-of-house functions are also critical to maintaining the terminal’s smooth operation. All design solutions ensure that short- to mid-term upgrades avoid unnecessary redundancy, while longer-term changes prioritise sustainability, with carbon reduction as a primary goal for the future.
To accommodate increasing passenger volumes over the next three to seven years, the airport’s security screening area has been quadrupled within the existing terminal footprint, increasing capacity and streamlining passenger processing. The changes ensure compliance with new Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), AVSEC and Customs security standards for domestic and international travel.
The security area expansion has impacted the provision of dwell space and retail performance. To address this, underused lounge areas are being reconfigured to create a new hospitality area within the domestic airside lounge by shifting the landside-airside boundary. New food and beverage offerings will transform the passenger experience and improve commercial performance, designed with scalability in mind for future expansion.
