The airport professional's source for airport industry news, articles, events, and careers.
Issue link: http://airportbusiness.epubxp.com/i/370519
COMMUNICATIONS TECH 26 airportbusiness August/September 2014 with WiFi than there is with beacons. A beacon doesn't track people at all," he says. "It doesn't know who you are. It just wakes up when you pass, alerts the phone and shares the informa- tion it has to share." OPT IN To full take advantage of beacon technology, pas- sengers must first opt to have an airport or airline app on their phones. Typically the first beacon passengers encounter informs them that an app is available for download but passengers decide whether or not to load it onto their phones. Within these apps, there needs to be a means for passengers to control the information they receive. This might be achieved by having pas- sengers clicking 'yes' or 'no' to a list of checkbox- es that appear the first time they open an app. "Passengers must be able to opt in to receive the information," Buchheim stresses. "It's important that they can configure the application to receive the information they want. The last thing we want to do is push out information—that passengers don't want and don't care about—to their elec- tronic devices." Easter believes most passengers will take full advantage of the functions these apps offer. "Just to know where you are and where you need to be enhances the customer experience," he says. The catch is that airports and airlines, as well as concessionaires and retailers, can all have apps, and to take full advantage of what they have to offer, passengers will need to download each and every one. Buchheim suggests in the future it may be necessary to develop a single app that works at every airport to eliminate this issue. "It could be sort of a directory app that helps you look into different areas," he says. PUTTING BEACONS IN PLACE The deployment of beacons is fairly simple. Remember Stick-Up air deodorizers, which had a sticky surface that allowed them to be placed any- where? Beacons attach to surfaces in a similar fash- ion and operate there until their batteries run low. The number of beacons required varies because users can set their range from one to 70 meters. In a typical Macy's store of 175,000 square feet, a beacon's range might be set to 50 meters and the store might only need seven to eight bea- cons. Battery life correlates to range; the smaller the range, the more often beacons communicate with mobile devices, which in turn shortens battery life. "Sometimes the beacon only needs to broadcast once a second, and then we have a beacon that can last three to nine years," Buchheim says. "There's a big difference between broadcasting once per second versus 10 times per second." But in a crowded airport, the maximum beacon range might be less than 35 meters. "The aver- age airport requires 2,000 to 3,000 beacons," says Buchheim. "They might need three to four beacons per gate, three to four at immigrations, three to four at arrivals and so on," he explains. At a $10 to $20 per beacon, however, equipping an airport isn't cost prohibitive. COMMON-USE PLATFORM Wherever they are installed, beacons need to be a common-use platform that airlines, airports, con- cessions operators and retail outlets can access, according to Kevin O'Sullivan, lead engineer at the SITA lab. "There should not be a need for every stakeholder to deploy their own beacons when beacons can be easily shared, especially in common-use areas," he says. "Likewise, beacons should not be placed anywhere without airport authorization." Jeff Shull, executive vice president at AirIT, explains that Apple introduced this protocol as open architecture by design. To limit its use to anything other than common-use technology, limits innovation. SITA launched a Common-Use Beacon regis- try in June to give the industry a single point of contact for beacons deployed at any airport in the world. According to Jim Peters, chief technology officer for SITA, this enables airports to control and share metadata with airlines and other partners and allows passengers to receive accurate and relevant information. While Shull indicates this data sharing might be a logical step, he questions whether it's being done from a revenue standpoint where airports may someday be asked to pay a subscription fee to participate in the registry and have their bea- cons maintained and supported. "Beacons should be managed by airports," he stresses, adding that this is where all aeronautical entities converge. While there are some bugs to be worked out, Easter stresses, "Beacons provide a fantastic opportunity to improve the passenger experience but to do so they must be consistently deployed at all airports." Once this happens, every passenger will have a travel experience similar to Karen's and the day of the connected traveler will have truly arrived. "There's more tracking going on with WiFi than there is with beacons. A beacon doesn't track people at all." JIMMY BUCHHEIM, CEO, STICKNFIND USES FOR BEACONS BEACONS stand poised to transform the passenger experi- ence in ways only dreamed of before. Some uses for beacons include: f In security lines. Here, beacons can direct travelers to the shortest line and inform them of the time they may stand in line. f At the gate. Beacons can let passengers know where they are within the airport and direct them to their connecting gates. "Sixty percent of our customers arrive early because they are scared and don't know what to do," says Phil Easter of American Airlines. "Beacons allow customers to explore by letting them know where they need to be and when." f In concessions and retail. Beacons can direct passengers to stores or food outlets and push coupon offers to their phones as well as alert them when it's time to get to their gates. f At the baggage carousel. Beacons can send alerts to passengers' phones, letting them know when their bags arrive.