Sensehacking passenger wellbeing while in the air

Abstract

Air travel has undoubtedly become a more stressful activity for many passengers in recent years, in part as a result of the global Covid pandemic. Consequently, there has been a growing focus on how to optimize the psychological wellbeing of passengers while in the air. This narrative historical review considers how the passenger experience can potentially be hacked through the more intelligent stimulation of the travellers’ senses. In particular, the focus is on promoting passenger comfort, enhancing the provision of healthy food and beverage options/experiences, facilitating relaxation and sleep and, when appropriate, boosting passengers’ arousal/alertness as well (e.g., prior to arrival). A number of concrete suggestions concerning how to sensehack passenger wellbeing at the various stages while in the air are made.

Smells, Well-being, and the Built Environment

“…Although typically neglected, given our visually dominant nature (see , for a review), there is a growing realization that the smells that are associated with our predominantly indoor existence may be having a significant impact on our mood and well-being (see Spence, , 2021. This goes together with an emerging realization that the sense of smell is more important to human well-being than has been suggested by many scientists over the last century .…”

“…At the same time, however, the emerging evidence also highlights the potentially positive impact that pleasant ambient scents can have on our social, emotional, and cognitive wellbeing, at least if managed appropriately. Scents, very often those associated with flowers, herbs, and spices, and other plants can be used to help us relax and sleep better at night, while making us more alert and productive during the day (see Spence, 2021, for a review). At the same time, however, it is worth reiterating cautionary note that fragrance-evoked mood changes tend to be small, and that the stress-reducing response of fragrance in humans may be difficult to measure in those individuals who are not stressed to begin with.…”

“…As we will see later, one cannot simply focus solely on the olfactory ambience, and ignore the visual, auditory, and even tactile aspects of the built environment. This is because the senses combine to influence our overall experience of, and response to, the multisensory atmosphere of the spaces in which we live, work, play, and sleep (Spence, , 2021. And while a number of architectural theorists have, in recent decades, increasingly started to stress the importance of going beyond the purely visual aspects of design (e.g., Anderton, 1991;Pallasmaa, 1994Pallasmaa, , 1996Pallasmaa, , 2000McCarthy, 1996;Malnar and Vodvarka, 2004;Eberhard, 2007; see also de Vries, 1997), they have not, as yet, fully recognized the multisensory interactions that drive our holistic response to the built environments in which we spend so much of our lives (see , for a recent review).…”

“…At the same time, however, a growing body of cognitive neuroscience research has revealed the various rules the brain uses in order to combine sensory inputs, sometimes doing so in what may at first appear to be surprising ways (Spence, 2021). Sometimes, for example, one sense dominates over the others in terms of determining our behavioral/perceptual response.…”

“…Here, though, it is worth noting that the citrus scent would itself eventually presumably also come to elicit stress should that become the standard smell that a person associates with a trip to the dentist. As such, it might be argued that healthcare establishments really ought to change their scent on a regular basis, say once every year or so, to avoid too many of their customers from building up an undesirable association between the stress of a visit and a particular ambient smell (Spence, 2021). At the same time, however, such a dynamic approach to scenting the healthcare environment does not leave much scope for establishing a healthcare brand's signature scent, this Spence Smell, Well-Being, and the Built Environment is something that is becoming increasingly important to private healthcare providers working in what has become an increasingly competitive marketplace in a number of countries (see Goldkuhl and Styvén, 2007;Naja et al, 2014).…”