Finding way around a new airport isn’t always easy and of course even Google Maps can’t help indoors. Thankfully it won’t be a problem at UK’s second busiest airport anymore. Acting on recently announced £2.5 billion transformation programme, Gatwick Airport has announced the launch of a navigation system for the airport.

To power the system, around 2000 beacons have been installed across Gatwick Airport’s two terminals providing an indoor navigation system. They have used the network of beacons to offer an augmented reality wayfinder for passengers which is the first for an airport. The passengers can see directions overlaid on the camera view of their phones so that they can accurately locate check in areas, departure gates, baggage belts etc.

Over time, the airport plans to find more utilities of the system with airlines and third party apps. It is currently being integrated into some of the Gatwick apps and the airport is also in discussion with airlines to enable the indoor positioning and wayfinding tools to also feature on their app services.

The system doesn’t collect any personal data and only uses generic information of people densities in different areas to better channel movements across the airport and speed up process. If passengers opt-in, airlines could go further and may send reminders on their airline app to late running passengers, for example, or find out where they are and make an informed decision on whether to wait or offload their luggage so the aircraft can take off on time. Retailers and other third parties may also use the beacon system to detect proximity and send relevant offers or promotional messages, if the passenger has chosen to receive them.

Abhi Chacko, Head of IT Commercial & Innovation, Gatwick Airport, said: “By providing the infrastructure we’re opening the door for a wide range of tech savvy airport providers, including our airlines and retailers, to launch new real-time services that can help passengers find their way around the airport, avoid missing flights or receive timely offers that might save them money. We are proud to be the first airport to deploy augmented reality technology and we hope that our adoption of this facility influences other airports and transport providers so that it eventually becomes the norm.”

The end to end “indoor blue dot” service is managed by PointrLabs.

 Axel Katalan, CMO at PointrLabs said: “As an ACI member advising on beacon installations around the world and as a company who have been involved in various airport projects from Asia to US, we are pleased to announce that Gatwick Airport will be the first airport with an end-to-end working system with incredible accuracy both in terms of blue-dot location and orientation. Our SDK enables battery-optimised, multiplatform and high performance positioning and other features such as 3D wayfinding through AR and on-screen translation, all of which are now available to be used by Gatwick and their partners as simple as drag & drop.”

The system was deployed over just three weeks followed by two months of testing and calibration. Other airports all over the world have also announced programs to develop solutions in association with tech companies to adopt tech solutions, Hamad International Airport being the latest one.

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Last month, we met Sam Amrani at the RISE Summit in HK and had a quick chat with him on the usage of beacons in the travel industry. Sam, who is the executive chairman at Tamoco, a London based leader in mobile proximity technology and analytics had some interesting insights on how he thinks the beacons will shape up the future of travel. We think beacons are going to be big in this part of the world and we should see a wide-scale adoption from airports to hotels in the coming days. There is an initial awareness challenge that the industry faces that can be potentially overcome with some adoption stories of beacons and how they’ve been used across different verticals.

Here is a short video of our conversation with Sam Amrani from our series TravHQ Talks. To watch out our other video stories, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Sam Amrani on how Travel Marketers can use Beacons appeared first on TravHQ.

You reach the Terminal 1D of Indira Gandhi Airport in Delhi for an early morning flight to Mumbai. The moment you step-in, your mobile receives a new notification on where your airline counter is. You also get an exact direction and the distance i.e. the number of steps you have to take. Once you receive your boarding pass and proceed towards the security check, you get a notification on your departure gate making the whole flying process a cakewalk!

Welcome to a completely whole new way to travel with Beacons! What we are talking about isn’t the future of travel. Beacons have been already implemented across many airports, hotels and even points of interests in different countries and expect this to be a part of your travel experience at the world’s best airport sometime very soon.

Beacons by Estimote, Inc: One of the most popular companies out in this space.

What are Beacons?

Beacons re-define the customer experience in physical retail and at all touch-points where there is a real-time interaction involved. Simply speaking, beacons ride on BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) to push targeted and contextual messages to your mobile app the moment you walk-in within their proximity. BLE enables transmission of messages over short distances with a range of few meters using little battery power.

Here is a quick look at how your entire experience is bound to change with Beacons:

Your Hotel Stay

Trouble-free checkin experience

When you check-in to any hotel in India, you undergo a typical drill at the reception where you have to share your passport/photo-id copy (example your pan-card), hotel reservation voucher and then the room is allocated to you. We are so used to a paper driven approach! This adds to your anxiety and if the queue is long, it also tests your patience.

With beacons, your check-in will happen in a jiffy as it will auto detect your name, contact info & your booking details once you step-in to the hotel lobby!

Keyless entry 

Starwood hotels, one of the earliest adopters of this concept has implemented a program called SPG Keyless™ available via SPG® app which enables its guests to have a completely keyless entrance and use their smart-phones to open their room door-locks.

Guests simply need to download the app on their Android or iOS device and need to configure it to receive notifications from a participating property if it has a keyless program implemented. The feature is available to Starwood Preferred Guests and is available across a list of worldwide properties. Unfortunately, none of the Indian cities are present in the list at the moment.

The SPG iOS app

Configuration of Keyless settings on the SPG iOS app

Imagine beacons guiding you about the restaurants in your hotel, their timings, in-room dining services and what not! It opens a whole new world of possibilities altogether

Beacons in your favorite museum or architectural property

Every time you visit a Museum, you either hire a guide or prefer to be self-guided. You stand in-front of those wonderful pieces of art, wondering about their significance and try to read behind the history. Sometimes you get bored and in a way it even limits your experience at these locations of historical significance.

But Philips Museum in Eindhoven is trying something unique with its interactive iBeacon game called Mission Eureka. Watch the video to learn more!!

Does sound exciting indeed? You never know what’s in-store for you, the next time you visit Delhi’s National Museum or Charminar in the city of Nizams

With seamless availability of GPS being a challenge in India, beacons might just provide the much needed boost to the Indian tourism & travel industry. Know of any Indian travel brands using beacons in an interesting way? Do share them with us!

The post How an Indian Traveller’s Journey will change with Beacons? appeared first on TravHQ.