I've heard how the Empire State Building's observation deck was built as a docking platform for zeppelins. That would imply that either people planned for zeppelins to be the next big thing in transportation or it already was.
They were very briefly used as commercial transport, beginning in 1910. Once World War I broke out in 1914, it sort of put a damper on the business and due to the Treaty Of Versailles, Germany (the largest maker of Zeppelins) was unable to make more. The restrictions were relaxed and two more of them, the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg were made. Of course, when the Hindenburg went up in flames, so did the zeppelin business.
In the first four years before the war, the airships had carried over 10,000 people to their destinations. They were mostly pleasure rides though, like a cruise, and there wasn't any organized system with departures and arrivals like an airport. Graf Zeppelin actually had quite a successful career - she went around the world and toured all over Europe to great fanfare. Unfortunately, after the Hindenburg, which first flew in 1936 and burned up in 1937, they were no more. Hermann Goering had the remaining models scrapped after the start of WWII.