Top 3 Indoor Navigation Predictions for 2019

2019 is barely three days old but at MapsPeople we like to keep one step ahead of market trends and development so we’ve already been looking into the year to come. While indoor wayfinding is still in its infancy there’s no doubt that the market is maturing rapidly. In 2016 the global indoor location market (including indoor navigation) accounted for USD 5.22 Billion but it’s expected to reach USD 40.99 Billion by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CARG) of 42% during the forecast period. So, what can we expect from 2019? Here’s our top 3 predictions for 2019 (in random order).

#1 Indoor Navigation becomes a must-have in all large buildings

The demand for indoor navigation is growing and as more and more venues implement a wayfinding solution the awareness of indoor navigation increases. With the increased awareness people will begin to look for indoor wayfinding when visiting large venues. 2019 may even be the year where they begin to expect venues to offer indoor navigation.

The maturing of the market might also expand the technology to smaller venues. As indoor wayfinding becomes more mainstream, it’s not unlikely that smaller venues, such as small shopping malls, will start implementing indoor navigation. While smaller buildings are usually easier to navigate than mega-complexes, they’re trying to copy the large venues and want to offer visitors a wayfinding solution for service and marketing reasons.

So, we believe 2019 will be the year where indoor navigation moves out of its infancy and becomes a must-have in all large venues and maybe even in smaller venues too.

#2 Smarter workplaces with indoor navigation

Our second prediction is about smart workplaces or rather how workplaces will become smarter in 2019.

More than two-thirds of people globally work away from the office at least once every week and a whopping 53% work remotely for at least half of the week. This means a lot of office space is left unused in companies with dedicated desks. As office space easily cost around $500 per employee per month, corporate offices can save a lot of money if they reduce the number of workplaces.

With 70% of employees working away from the office at least once a week, large offices can reduce the number of desks by 10% or maybe more if they switch to shared desks. This means that a company with 5000 office employees can save 500 desks every month. At 500 USD per desk that’s a saving of $250,000 a month or an incredible $3,000,000 a year which is probably why two-third of multinational corporations plan to implement shared workplaces by 2020.

However, finding an available desk or locating colleagues can be tricky in shared-desk environments with thousands of employees and that’s where indoor navigation enters the picture. With indoor wayfinding employees get an easy overview of available desks and by interfacing the solution with a booking system companies can optimize the use of its spaces. But there’s more.

Indoor navigation can also be combined with IoT which provides offices a complete overview of the occupancy rate in a snapshot. The collected data, such as the occupancy rate, allow companies to predict what their office layout should look like according to the number of employees, projects, time of year, etc.

#3 Display data externally with indoor navigation

Companies are increasingly driven by data and we believe 2019 will be the year where they start displaying the data they already have internally, externally through their indoor navigation solution. This could be airports showing the parking availability on the map when guiding travelers from their front door to the gate or convention centers and stadiums showing waiting times at restaurants and food vendors.

For years companies have focused on data to help them make the right business decisions faster and now it’s time to display some of this data externally. We’re in the era of experience. Consumers demand better in-store experience that can compete with the convenience of online shopping. Sports fans want a superior stadium experience that beats the comfort of watching the game at home. And conference attendees want a personalized experience that gives them more than “just” networking and new business opportunities. In other words, experience seems to be the key if you want to excel in 2019 and that’s why we expect more venues to display relevant data in their indoor navigation solution in order to assist users as much a possible and improve the experience of their venue.

As much as we’d love to tell you about new and amazing innovations, we don’t believe 2019 will be the year of groundbreaking features. Instead we believe that the market and the technology will develop and mature in the next 12 months opening up for new innovations in the future.

If you want to know more about MapsIndoors, go explore our website, get inspired by our showcases, or check out our eBooks and on-demand webinars.