Beacons – coming to an airport near you?

Beacon technology has been hailed as a game-changer in retail. It uses Bluetooth to trigger the display of information on phones and tablets that is relevant to the specific location and context of the user. But will Beacons be used at the world’s airports? SITA Lab, the technology research team of the air transport industry’s IT provider SITA, has conducted the earliest trials of beacon technology at airports and has today issued its findings in its paper “Connecting to your passenger – are beacons the breakthrough?”

Connecting and communicating efficiently with passengers throughout their journey is a widely-held goal in the air transport industry and SITA Lab’s research has investigated the potential of using beacon technology in today’s airports. The benefits being touted for the technology, such as low cost and wide range, have a strong appeal for anyone wanting to connect directly with customers. But SITA Lab investigated if the technology works as advertized in the real world. Trials with a leading international airline and airport have produced results which are both promising and cautionary.

SITA’S Chief Technology Officer, and the head of SITA Lab, Jim Peters, said: “The relatively low cost of beacons makes them an attractive option for airports, but we need to be careful of adopting a gold rush approach to deploying them. It is clear from our initial research that beacons should be treated as a common-use piece of infrastructure. Airports serve multiple airlines, and airlines travel to multiple airports. It is a very complex network - too complex for everyone to manage their own deployments. It will need careful management.