Whether you’re a businessperson with your suitcase always ready or a travel-mad youngster in search of the best deal, one thing is for sure: all of us have had a stressful airport experience at one point or another.
We all know how it feels to negotiate impossible airport transfers where we disembark, wait around and then board again in the dead of night.
We’ve all had to get up at the crack of dawn for a flight, cursing our thinking when it came to booking the thing, when the rock-bottom price seemed like a one-off opportunity and the early wakeup call was a reasonable compromise.
We’ve all been hit with unexpected delays and interminable waits.
And yes, we’ve all found ourselves plopped onto a chair in the crowded, noisy, chaotic waiting room, trying – and, inevitably, failing – to get some rest.
What we’ve just described is a snapshot of the frustrations endured by millions of travellers around the world every day. And this is exactly what inspired three 30-something students – two from the Politecnico di Milano and one from the Università Statale – to start thinking about how to fix an issue of which everyone has first-hand experience.
Our young entrepreneurs are Nicolas Montonati (POLIMI, Architecture), Alberto Porzio (UNIMI) and Matteo Anthony Destantini, who hailed from the Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Management Engineering. The department is, like MIP, part of the university’s School of Management and encompasses the fields of management, economics and industrial engineering.
As is so often the case, the best ideas are formed when talented young people use their intuition and determination to channel what they’ve taken from their studies – in this case managerial training, entrepreneurial spirit and engineering expertise – into finding a solution to a real-life problem.
Enter ZZZleepandGo, an innovative start-up which the young trio launched in 2014 on the basis of a simple business idea with seemingly limitless potential: to install bespoke areas in airports where people can rest, even just for a few hours.
The project instantly piqued the interest of the main airport operators, who identified in ZZZleepandGo an original, innovative way of increasing customer satisfaction, keeping travellers in the airport for longer (and thus encouraging them to use other airport services) and, as a result, boosting overall revenue for the airport.
It’s a win-win service which satisfies the needs of the traveller, who can enjoy a comfortable rest during wait times and destress at a very low price (less than €8/hour).
ZZZleepandGo offers customers the use of its smart lounges. These tiny hi-tech modules are equipped with automatic bedding changing, air ventilation and ionisation, free WiFi and an alarm system which syncs with boarding times. The pods ensure the highest levels of comfort, with soundproofing, multimedia devices and colour therapy, and can be booked using the app, online or at one of the local sites.
While the first modules were made by hand by the three start-up founders, the business has now been projected onto a larger scale thanks to the support of big-name partners like Orio al Serio airport and Milan Malpensa’s Terminal 1. Both are vital cogs in Italy’s air industry, accommodating millions of domestic and international passengers on a daily basis.
Thanks to ZZZleepandGo, the innovative solution which revolutionises the way we travel, the old trick of stretching your legs out on your suitcase will become a thing of the past. As will worrying about your luggage altogether – ZZZleepandGo allows you to store this away in a private cloakroom.
