When customers tell their own story: the platform story of Zurich Airport
Ivo Bättig
The most honest reference is the one customers give themselves. Nico Castagna, Head of Digital & Experience at Flughafen Zürich AG, took the stage in July 2026 at APEX FTE EMEA and Ancillary & Retailing 2026 in Dublin in front of an international professional audience.
He described how his organization built a digital platform over seven years. Unic was mentioned several times throughout – not as a vendor, but as a long-standing partner.
In Brief
Flughafen Zürich AG now operates its digital services on a headless platform rather than a monolithic CMS.
Various offerings can be developed independently and delivered across any channel.
A GPT chatbot answers travel questions directly in ChatGPT – right where users are already searching.
In 2021, the platform won Gold at Best of Swiss Web and Best of Swiss Apps, and a year later the World Travel Tech Award as "Europe's Best Airport Website"; Castagna presented the case in 2026 at APEX FTE EMEA in Dublin.
Unic supports Flughafen Zürich AG as a long-standing technology and implementation partner for the platform.
Here we put into context what Castagna said – and why it matters to us.
"This is no longer a website – it's a platform."
In 2019, the brief was clear: a new website for three areas. What came of it, Castagna summed up at the conference like this:
The platform brings together web information, e-commerce, dining, wayfinding and chatbot messaging into a single whole. It helps people find the information they need – and to purchase services and products. But it is also the backbone for everything we do in the future.
The architecture behind it was headless from the very beginning: content and presentation are separated. The same content from Sitecore now appears on the website, in digital wayfinding for on-site guests, and in the employee app for the approximately 35,000 people who work at Zurich Airport.
Anyone who considered this over-engineering back in 2019 will understand the reason by now at the latest: the platform never serves just one target group. In the case of Flughafen Zürich AG, that includes passengers, visitors to the shopping centre, and employees throughout the airport campus (such as those at The Circle).
Small Example, Big Impact: ZRH Comfort
The platform-first thinking is most clearly demonstrated by ZRH Comfort: travellers book a bundle online that includes a Priority Lane and a dining credit – and after that, all they need is their boarding pass, with no separate registration required. "No extra vouchers. That creates too much friction," said Castagna. This is not just a UI decision – it is platform architecture.
Letting Go of the Illusion, Not the Frontend
The most strategically significant statement from Dublin was also the most nuanced:
I am convinced that we need to let go of the illusion of owning the frontend.
This does not mean that Zurich Airport is abandoning its own website. It means: we have built the platform in such a way that it delivers reliable information across every channel. Through its own channels, but also through search engines, AI assistants, or channels that do not yet exist today. Castagna elaborated:
Our platform is built from the ground up to deliver reliable information to any frontend. And I think it's a good thing if people use whichever service they prefer in their daily lives.
Since January 2024, a GPT chatbot built by Unic for Zurich Airport has been delivering real-time information on departure times and gates directly within ChatGPT. Castagna spoke openly about the journey to get there – including early versions that invented answers:
For us, it was a learning process. We also had our fun with hallucinations and all that.
Those who speak publicly about failed attempts stand firmly behind their own strategy.
What This Means for Digital Platforms
Headless architecture was a design decision in 2019. Seven years later, it is the prerequisite that allows the same platform to support an employee app, an AI chatbot, and a cross-channel commerce offering – without having to rebuild everything from scratch.
And perhaps that is the real proof of confidence: not the countless awards. Not the technology. But the fact that Castagna tells this story publicly, seven years after go-live – on someone else's stage, in front of an international audience.
External sources:
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Image: (c) Flughafen Zürich AG