This summer, Atrius Wayfinder introduced new capabilities that help airports and airlines keep travelers informed and connected. From real-time updates and improved accessibility to AI-powered access to airport information, these enhancements make it easier to get the right information at every stage of the journey.

Across June, July, and August, we expanded the different ways travelers interact with airport information, helping airports and airlines keep information current, improve navigation across channels, and extend trusted airport information into the AI experiences travelers increasingly use every day.

Whether helping travelers understand the world around the airport, adapting to operational changes in real time, supporting more flexible journeys, or enabling new AI-powered interactions, these updates help airports deliver more useful, accessible, and responsive information at every stage of the traveler journey.

Showing Travelers the World Around the Airport

Most Maps Start at the Terminal. Journeys Start Earlier

Most airport maps begin once a traveler arrives. World View extends the experience beyond the terminal, helping travelers understand how the airport connects to surrounding roads, rail networks, waterways, landmarks, and destinations. The result is a better understanding of the airport and its surroundings before travelers ever step inside the terminal.

A Spoken Sense of Place 

In June, World View also began describing an airport’s surroundings aloud for travelers who use screen readers. When someone focuses on the map, they hear a natural description of nearby cities, roads, parks, waterways, and other landmarks, helping create the same sense of place that sighted travelers gain at a glance. 

We also improved how screen readers navigate map menus and dialogs and addressed a Windows-specific accessibility issue, further strengthening the experience for travelers who rely on assistive technologies. 

High Contrast, Applied Automatically 

In July, World View introduced a high-contrast display mode that can be enabled by travelers or automatically activated when a device’s accessibility settings already indicate a preference for high contrast. This helps more travelers access information without needing to search for additional settings.  

The same release added more airside detail, including service roads, runways, and taxiways, while also improving map performance and delivering more relevant search results. 

World View on Mobile 

World View also became available within airport and airline mobile applications, bringing surrounding roads, rail lines, waterways, parks, and landmarks directly into mobile experiences. Travelers can better understand both how they will arrive at the airport and how they will navigate it once inside. 

Alongside the launch, we improved location accuracy during navigation and enhanced transit directions by identifying nearby train and bus stops. 

Keeping Airport Information in Step with the Day 

Airport information changes throughout the day. Whether a check-in counter changes, a temporary service area opens, or a shared space is reassigned, airport teams need a way to communicate those changes immediately. 

Introduced this summer, Flash Updates is a new Atrius Wayfinder capability that enables airports to temporarily update point-of-interest names in real time without republishing a map or modifying the underlying record. The capability is now available across the Wayfinder platform, bringing a consistent experience across web and mobile applications. Temporary updates appear automatically across map labels, search results, autocomplete suggestions, and location details, then revert when no longer needed. With a single update, airports can keep traveler-facing information synchronized as operational conditions change throughout the day. 

Note: Timing and automation are managed in your own systems 

Smarter Routing for Complex Airport Journeys 

Whether travelers are stopping at a lounge, grabbing a meal, or heading to their gate, airport journeys rarely involve just one destination. Recent enhancements strengthen support for existing multi-stop routing capabilities, helping deliver a more consistent experience across embedded map views and mobile applications. Improvements to route guidance, travel time estimates, and overall routing reliability across iOS and Android help ensure travelers receive accurate directions throughout more complex airport journeys. 

Additional routing improvements include more accurate navigation around security checkpoints, faster route calculations, more reliable travel time and distance estimates, and overall enhancements to routing stability. 

Making Airport Information Available Through AI 

AI assistants are becoming a natural way for people to discover information, plan activities, and answer questions. This summer, Atrius Wayfinder took an important step toward making airport information available through the AI tools most commonly used. 

The Wayfinder MCP Server makes trusted airport information available to leading AI assistants, including ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. By connecting AI directly to an airport’s live map and information, travelers can receive accurate, location-aware answers based on the airport they are visiting.  

Rather than searching multiple websites or applications, travelers can ask questions naturally and receive responses informed by airport locations, security checkpoints, gates, amenities, and flight-related information. 

For airport and airline teams, the service is fully managed, making it easier to begin exploring AI-powered experiences without significant development effort. 

Driving Greater Value from Airport Parking

Parking is a major revenue opportunity for airports, and making it easier for travelers to reserve parking can have a direct impact on conversion and revenue. Atrius Wayfinder now gives airports greater flexibility to connect travelers directly to parking reservation experiences through dedicated Reserve Parking URLs. Instead of sending travelers through multiple steps or webpages to find the correct booking page, airports can direct travelers straight from the map to a parking reservation, reducing friction in the booking process and creating more opportunities to convert traveler interest into parking reservations. 

Additional parking enhancements give airports more flexibility in how they configure booking and informational experiences, allowing Reserve Parking and Website URLs to be managed independently for each parking location. We also added regional currency support, enabling parking rates to be displayed in the venue’s local currency. Combined with live parking integrations, airports can now surface real-time parking status and localized pricing in a single experience. Learn more in the Live Map Data Integration Guide. 

Accessibility as Continuous Innovation 

Creating more accessible airport experiences remains a priority for Atrius Wayfinder. This summer, we delivered another broad set of improvements spanning keyboard navigation, screen reader announcements, labeling, visual focus indicators, and usability across the web experience.  

Additional enhancements included consistent support for Global Entry lanes across web and mobile, improved search behavior for misspellings and partial entries, and better handling of multi-level environments when selecting search results. 

Continuing the Journey 

Together, these updates continue Atrius Wayfinder’s evolution beyond traditional digital maps. By combining richer context, real-time information, accessibility, and AI-powered experiences, airports can deliver more connected traveler experiences while ensuring information remains accurate, relevant, and accessible across every touchpoint. 

As traveler expectations continue to evolve, airports need information experiences that are just as dynamic. These updates represent another step toward helping airports deliver the right information, at the right time, through the channels travelers use every day. 

Reach out to your Atrius account manager or contact us to start a conversation. For a more in-depth look at these updates, visit our monthly changelog.