In the news this week: Your smartwatch as a boarding pass, Amadeus’ light ticketing solution for AirAsia, Air India’s 50th airline on Travelport merchandising platform, Amadeus partners with Alipay
Boarding a flight the smartphone way
Virgin Atlantic boarding pass / Image credit: SITA
You may soon board a flight with just a mere flick of your wrist and scan of your smartwatch as airlines can now offer their ultra tech-savvy passengers the chance to do just that.
This is made possible by SITA Lab, as it leads in the area of wearable tech by providing boarding passes for Android watches via its API available now on developer.aero.
This is how it works: a simple alert via Android Wear technology will remind the passenger of their flight at the appropriate time and location. A quick swipe reveals the boarding pass. A second swipe displays the barcode allowing the passenger to get through the airport checkpoints and board the plane.
Jim Peters, SITA CTO said, “We have done considerable research into the use of wearable technology for the air transport industry and this is the first step to enable passengers to use their own wearable devices as they make their way through the airport.
He added that SITA’s boarding pass is fully compliant with international regulations, including the TSA, so can be used at airports across the world.
“We’ve made this available through our industry API platform so it will be interesting to see which airlines will be the early adopters.”
SITA provides a selection of APIs for airlines and airports on its developer.aero platform including ones for beacons, baggage tracking and iTravel. Because the boarding passes are delivered via API a simple mark up in the code, which takes less than two minutes, enables Google Now operation and allows smartwatches to be a useful travel tool.
SITA’s boarding pass API is already in use at major airlines including JetBlue and Virgin Atlantic, with the latter as first in world to use wearable technology to serve passengers
Peters added, “Smartwatches haven’t really taken off just yet but the predictions are very strong. The SmartWatch Group reports that 40 companies launched smartwatches in 2013, and it predicts these devices will become indispensable in the years to come. SITA has now made it possible for airlines to be ready for boarding when these wearable tech devices go mainstream.”
Booking on AirAsia made faster with Amadeus’ light ticketing solution
Image credit: AirAsia
AirAsia is the first airline in Asia Pacific to implement light ticketing technology from Amadeus, which gives travel agencies an even simpler and faster way to book the airline’s content.
Amadeus said that for the first time, traditional shopping, booking and back-office flows will be combined with real-time dynamic fares provided through its connection with AirAsia’s Extensible Markup Language (XML)
Amadeus connected travel agencies can also view and compare AirAsia fares in the same screen as full-service carriers, something not previously possible.
The solution makes the booking process on the low cost carrier up to five times faster than booking outside of the GDS.
A key benefit for travel agencies is the integration of the mid- and back-office and sales reporting as the airline’s flight bookings can now be fully integrated in travel agents’ internal reporting processes, allowing them to track their business performance automatically.
All mid- and back-office processes will also be integrated, significantly reducing time spent on administrative tasks, following the same process as full-service carriers.
Hazem Hussein, Amadeus Asia Pacific’s airline commercial executive vice president, said the agreement allows AirAsia to better reach the growing corporate sector via Amadeus’ network of travel agencies around the world and “will pave the way for improved yield for the airline”.
Air India, 50th airline to join Travelport merchanding platform
Travelport reached a merchandinng milestone when Air India became the 50th airline to sign up for Travelport Rich Content and Branding – the third component of Travelport’s Merchandising Platform.
Airlines on board include Delta, Avianca, Sun Country Airlines, Peruvian Airlines, Ryanair, British Airways, Iberia, easyJet, SilkAir, Hong Kong Airlines, Hainan Airlines and United Airlines.
Travelport Rich Content and Branding is a progressive technology, which enables airlines to more effectively control how their fares and ancillaries are visually presented and described on travel agency screens, bringing them more in line with the airline’s own website experience.
When launched on Travelport Smartpoint agency desktops later this year, Rich Content and Branding will allow travel agents to access rich content and extended descriptions aggregated into their usual booking flow to better inform and encourage customers’ purchasing decisions around fares and ancillaries.
Kurt Ekert, Travelport chief commercial officer, said, ““Being able to leverage graphical content and providing a holistic brand experience will be a key factor for airlines to successfully differentiate themselves. At the same time, access to rich content allows travel agents to be more informative about product features and benefits, enabling them to influence customers’ purchasing decisions and increasing up-sell and cross sell opportunities.”
Amadeus integrates Alipay into its payment platform
Amadeus is making inroads in the Chinese payment market through a strategic collaboration with Alipay, one of China’s leading online payment service providers, to integrate it into the Amadeus Payment Platform (APP).
This partnership makes it easier for Amadeus’ travel providers to serve Chinese travellers by offering them the option to pay with Alipay’s online payment system, trusted by millions of registered Chinese customers.
Celia Pereiro, head of Amadeus Travel Payments, said, “With this collaboration we add a key payment provider to our platform to satisfy our customers’ payment needs. Our travel-payment expertise, combined with Alipay’s market penetration and the ease of using Alipay’s products, will provide our customers with the right solution to meet Chinese payment demands.”
Jingming Li, group vice president and head of Alipay US and Europe added that the partnership would five Alipay users more choice and convenience overseas.” overseas.”
China set a record in 2012 as the world’s top spending tourism market with a total expenditure of US$102 billion. In 2013, 100 million Chinese tourists made outbound trips and industry experts estimate this figure to reach 200 million by 2020. Chinese tourism spending is expected to triple in the same period. The countr is also set to become the world’s biggest domestic travel market by 2017.
* Featured image (smartwatch) credit: Gianluca Rasile/Shutterstock
