Just one year ago, the world was still grappling with varying degrees of lockdowns, prompting many cities to expand their use of smart city technology and accelerate the transition towards a new urban paradigm.
Measuring smart city performance and functionality has become essential. Companies, investors, and commentators are desperate to know how cities are rebounding from the pandemic. KONE’s elevator usage data provides great insight into this, moving over one billion people worldwide every day.
This unique data tells a story of tourists and office workers steadily returning to European cities over the past year. But the pattern varies greatly.
Take the example of London’s office buildings, where the average number of starts per KONE elevator in January 2022 was 6,600, and by the end of the year, this increased by 56% to 10,300.
Paris, Berlin and Hamburg, however, had had a much more modest returns to the office measured by elevator journeys, which only went up by 33%, 44% and 36%, respectively, over the year.
When it comes to hotels, Amsterdam again topped the European chart for the largest increase in the average number of elevator journeys in 2022, surging by 215% over the year, with average number of starts per elevator peaking at 25,600 in November.
Munich’s hotels saw a 168% increase in elevator starts over the year, while Berlin and Brussels also achieved triple-digit growth with both registering a 161% increase in elevator journeys.
On the other hand, London achieved a modest 40% increase in hotel usage across 2022 bringing the UK’s capital in line to the lower tier compared with other European metropoles. London peaked in July with a 60% increase compared to January. During the Christmas period, when footfall would be expected to increase, there was a 6% dip compared to the summer. This decrease could be credited to the wave of industry strikes across rail networks which impacted many businesses across the hospitality sector.
The increase of elevator starts in hotels last year points to the revamp of the tourism industry after Covid measures were lifted. But the variance between cities might also reflect the growing trend of people choosing destinations based on sustainability and safety factors; Amsterdam providing a clear example of a city in which it is possible to walk or cycle to most destinations, avoiding crowds.
Whilst many structural changes like the future of the office continue to play out, the importance of cities is certain. The number of people living in cities is predicted to rise from four billion today to more than six billion by 2050.
Elevator data will be needed for insight into the flow of urban life, how buildings need to be adapted from one use to another, and how best to accommodate an increasing number of people in cities in a sustainable way.