Innovation That Matters

Singapore airport's four-storey slide rewards duty-free spending

Travel & Tourism

Airports are no strangers to innovation when it comes to attracting business, and we’ve already seen several interesting examples—Heathrow’s installation of a writer in residence, for instance, and dance lessons at the Aeroports de Paris, to name just two. None of the ones we’ve seen so far, however, can achieve the same heights—quite literally—as Singapore’s Changi Airport, which has installed a slide four storeys tall. Reminiscent of artist Carsten Höller’s wildly popular installation in the Tate Modern a few years back, The Slide@T3 bills itself as the world’s tallest slide in an airport. That may well be true, for the thrill-seeker’s dream stands a full 12 metres high, permitting top speeds of up to six metres per second. To encourage visitors to experience the thrill, Changi gives consumers two slide tokens for every SGD 30 they spend at the airport in a single receipt. For the faint of heart, there’s also a one-and-a-half-storey version that can be tried for free in the airport’s Basement 2 level. Changi Airport also, incidentally, maintains a Children’s Playground, a multimedia Entertainment Deck and multiple movie theatres. As Höller notes in an interview about his own slide, “the state of mind that you enter when sliding, of simultaneous delight, madness and ‘voluptuous panic,’ can’t simply disappear without trace afterwards.” It leaves a lasting impression, in other words—which, of course, is what the experience economy is all about. 😉 (Related: Bungee jump for high-end thrill-seekers.) Spotted by: David Rhoades

Website: www.changiairport.com/at-changi/events-and-promotions/the-slide-t3

Contact: www.changiairport.com/our-business/contact-us/feedback-and-enquiry

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