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INSIGHT & ANALYSIS
INFLIGHT TECHNOLOGY REPORT
Smart solutions
Inflight concessionaires and payment solutions providers are working together on new tablet-friendly
payment solutions systems in an effort to increase inflight sales and engage flight attendants.
Kapila Gohel assesses the move and its merits
GuestLogix has partnered with Finnair for a Samsung Tab POS
T
he digital revolution
has meant smartphones and tablets have
become indispensable
communication devices in the
modern age. Whether at home or
on the road, people have become
attached to their devices and many
see it is as a sign of revolutionary
service when offered a tablet to
make purchases in the retail world.
The service industry has embraced
the digital age—from companies
such as OTG offering customers
the possibility of ordering food and
drinks via tablets to those that have
gone even further offering augmented
reality allowing customers to “try on”
products such as jewellery, watches
and even cosmetics.
The inflight retail industry,
which has long relied on pointof-sale (POS) devices dedicated
solely to capture sales, has made
significant tracks in the move
towards smartphone and tablet
POS solutions.
Global provider of onboard retail
and payment technology solutions
GuestLogix Inc has recently partnered
with Finnair to deploy its Androidbased point-of-sale (POS) solution
via the Samsung Tab and GuestLogix
certified payment peripherals.
On the Tab
Last year Finnair partnered with Gebr
Heinemann for its inflight and preorder duty-free sales and procurement
operations, and the new solution will
allow Finnair’s cabin crew to sell dutyfree items and enhance the service
provided to passengers.
The mobile POS solution offers
sophisticated promotion and commission management capabilities
and can actively configure complex
promotions prompting consumers
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to buy more products, or specific
types of products onboard.
For example, the device can be
configured to prompt cabin crew
to know that if a passenger buys a
specific product, they’re also likely to
buy another product and can also be
used to actively manage and configure
commission payments to incentivise
crew members to sell certain products
and secure more commission.
The device also has options
making it speedy to serve passengers, and is simple to use from the
passengers’ point of view. From their
seat, passengers simply have to enter
their PIN securely on the back of
the device and return it to a cabin
crew member.
GuestLogix head of global sales
Andy Archer tells DFNI: “The
Samsung Tab is a more modern,
multi-use platform. Traditional
onboard sales have been handled
through a POS device that was dedicated solely to the capture of a sale.
“The new multi-use Androidplatform device has more of the
features commonly found on
consumer tablets and devices, and
can be used for many things besides
POS—a primary advantage for an
airline. It can be used to not only
capture a sale, but also to store,
read and update onboard flight and
training manuals, operational forms
and other activities,” he explains.
The crew can use the device to
record damage to a seat, for example,
or identify a problem in the cabin
that needs attention upon landing.
Because it’s a consumer device,
Archer points out that airlines
benefit from greater performance
and more modern platform architecture, translating to improved
speed and efficiency compared to
traditional POS devices.
www.DFNIonline.com
07/07/2015 10:41:41
INFLIGHT TECHNOLOGY REPORT
INSIGHT & ANALYSIS
33
“
Speed of service
is critical to offering
ancillary products
onboard, and the
primary benefit of
this new technology
is speed
”
Andy Archer
GuestLogix head of global sales
Tablet POS systems address the challenge of processing speed
The primary challenge the new
system addresses is processing
speed. Archer says: “More and more
airlines are selling food and beverage
onboard rather than offering them as
part of a standard seat package, and
they’re also selling duty-free items
onboard. That evolution requires
crew members to handle more transactions in the same time period in
the air and as a result, the flight
attendants are under pressure to
serve everyone, sell more products,
and process more transactions and
payments. Speed of service is critical to offering ancillary products
onboard, and the primary benefit
of this new technology is speed.”
Secondly, Archer feels it is important to ensure airlines have solutions
that can handle multiple, current
payment types that adhere to payment
guidelines and cater to customer
expectations. “In Finnair’s case, it
was beneficial to move from a credit
card magnetic stripe solution for
processing payments to a Chip & PIN
solution, where a passenger enters
a PIN on the device to complete
the transaction. This takes slightly
longer since the flight attendant has
to physically hand the device to the
consumer to enter a PIN number,
so it’s important to have a nimble
solution that can deal with speed
requirements and support a variety
of payment types,” he explains.
Online onboard
payment. Our airline customers
are thinking of creative ways to
use onboard WiFi technology
to increase the number of products
sold—games, digital lotto cards,
magazines, all sorts of products that
can be offered digitally—and to
open omni-channel opportunities
for ancillary revenue, retail transactions, and passenger self-service.
Despite the advent of onboard
WiFi, snail-pace connections and
exorbitant costs means even those
passengers with itchy fingers have
deferred to inflight entertainment
to keep them amused instead of
paying high fees to stay connected
in the air. DFNI asks inflight
concessionaires and payment
solution providers their thoughts
on the how WiFi complements
the inflight technology suite and
increases sales and whether they
have felt an impact on business.
Joe Harvey
Baptiste Duguit
Tourvest Inflight Retail Services
head of new business development
Joe Harvey: WiFi is limited to only
a few airlines currently. Tourvest
continuously investigates trends and
looks to harness new technology.
At the current time we are focusing
efforts on the next generation POS
units which do not require WiFi
to operate effectively. This focus
is constantly monitored and if we
see a requirement, then investment
will be made in WiFi technology
and implementations.
GuestLogix head of global sales
Andy Archer: Onboard WiFi,
whether it’s a permanent connection to the ground or not, has
certainly boosted sales because
it opens up entirely new channels and increases the number of
products available for sale onboard.
Different airlines have different
strategies for WiFi. Some want
to provide their passengers, especially business class passengers,
with unlimited access to internet
services, while low-cost airlines
might view onboard WiFi as a
retailing opportunity and make it
available for sale onboard or create
a portal through which passengers
can purchase ancillary items. We
have airline customers in Europe
talking about integrating onboard
WiFi service with flight attendant-driven retail channels, so
that an item purchased through
your own device or seatback interface—food, beverage, duty-free
item—can be delivered by a flight
attendant who then handles the
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Dutyfly Solutions marketing and
commercial director Baptiste
Duguit: None of our current
airlines offer an advance WiFi
on-board. In Dutyfly Solutions’
vision, WiFi on-board will be
used to improve the inflight
shopping experience. Different
materials, more content, no credit
card limit—it should be seen as an
opportunity more than a threat.
ECR CEO Simon Pont: Once
WiFi is truly available we envisage
this would boost sales among
frequent flyers especially enabling
loyalty schemes and on-ground
duty-free sales.
July 2015 • Duty-Free News International
07/07/2015 10:41:46
34
INSIGHT & ANALYSIS
INFLIGHT TECHNOLOGY REPORT
Going the extra air mile
Now companies such as Media
inMotion, are taking things up a
notch with the recent announcement the company is developing
an Apple Watch App for Monarch
Airlines allowing passengers to
order food, beverages and duty-free
items from the comfort of their
seat at any time during the flight.
The MPlayer Apple Watch App
is expected to be deployed in the
coming months. It is designed to
work seamlessly with Monarch’s
existing Mplayer inflight entertainment app to enable passengers
using the smart watch to browse
and order food, beverages and
gifts. The advantage lies in the app’s
ability to display on a second screen
without interrupting the passenger’s
inflight entertainment. Passengers
may already be streaming to their
primary personal electronic device
from Monarch’s advanced wireless
One of the key arguments in
favour of using an Android platform is the ease in which cabin
crew can quickly pick up how to
use such devices.
“This is a really important point,
because when we launched the device
with Finnair, we found it required
very little training. The technology
was completely new to the crew,
but because it was on an Android
platform, crew members intuitively
knew how to use it,” says Archer.
Positive sales
Inflight concessionaire Tourvest
Inflight Retail Services, which
operates on British Airways, South
African Airways and Kenya Airways,
is in fact developing its own in-house
developed EPOS (Electronic POS)
software, which will initially be available on the Apple iPad, along with
a printer and integrated Chip &
PIN payment terminal, including
contactless technology.
Head of new business development Joe Harvey tells DFNI
Tourvest predicts that rather than
crew seeing inflight sales as a mere
“task”, they will soon “want” to use
the service. “The work is suddenly
made interesting, interactive, and
the technology looks great so they
want to show it off and be seen
using ‘modern technology’ in front
of passengers,” he explains.
Feedback received from crew on its
prototype has been only positive.“After
•Destination weather
Orders can be prepared for delivery to your seat
onboard entertainment system,
also provided by Media inMotion.
The app is still in development but
in practice, cabin crew will be notified of the passenger’s Watch App
request via their connected terminal.
The order can then be prepared
seeing the device, all they wanted to
know was when they would see it on
board. Tourvest believes the launch of
the new technology will mean crew
will actively want to use the service,
inspiring a culture of positive sales
enthusiasts,” he says.
Currently, Tourvest’s existing
platform is limited to a Windows
PDA-based device. “Although
perfectly serviceable, the units are
now dated, do not offer an easy
upgrade path, with repair costs
not entirely within its control,”
says Harvey.
“The new technology has the
distinct advantage of being developed in-house. This opens up a huge
door for both Tourvest and its airline
The Monarch MPlayer Apple
Watch App v1.0 currently features
•Food and drink ordering
•Order history
•Flight status
partners. Because there are only
two parties involved. Ideas can be
managed, designed and implemented
much faster than previously. The
EPOS experts are now Tourvest’s
experts, so knowledge can be used
to directly support the airlines in a
fast-paced, agile manner.”
Familiar environment
The new devices will be: lighter; run
up-to-date Apple platforms, allowing
for easy upgrades and improvements; capable of processing Chip
& PIN transactions; speedier transactions and operate a “familiar
Apple environment”.
One of the cost advantages of
developing the new system in-house
for Tourvest is internal expertise is
utilised to design the best possible
software for end users. “Our business is dedicated to the travel-retail
environment, so we know what users
would like to see and how they would
like to operate,” says Harvey.
Since Tourvest will own the intellectual property of the software, it can
offer competitive advantages for its
customers as the cost of licence fees to
use the software is completely within
its control. Meanwhile, improvements
to the software and hardware offering
is completely within Tourvest’s
control, meaning new products and
features can be offered much quicker
and be delivered in a manner that suits
the customer.
Monarch is working with Media inMotion for an Apple Watch App
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for at-seat delivery and payment.
Add-on functionalities currently
in development:
•Push notifications: Passengers
can be alerted to special offers
or “flash sales” through the
Watch App.
•Smart wallet compatibility:
Passengers can use Apple Pay
or other smart wallet technology
to complete payment.
• Seat chat: Passengers can allow
fellow travellers to connect during
the flight.
•Home-delivery: Customers can
purchase from an expanded range
of products which can be delivered to homes or hotels, or picked
up at the airport.
•Device handoff: Watch App
users will be able to start an
order on one device and continue
on another.
www.DFNIonline.com
07/07/2015 10:42:06
INSIGHT & ANALYSIS
INFLIGHT TECHNOLOGY REPORT
35
Dutyfly Solutions, the inflight
concessionaire for airlines such as
Air France, Iberia, Alitalia and Air
Caraïbes is also working on a new
EPOS system in-house that will be
adaptable to a touch-screen tablet.
The company has its own in-house
team of developers that works on the
front and back office of its software
solutions, ensuring custom-designed
software for the EPOS. Through
the in-house expertise Dutyfly
Solutions is able to easily adapt
and change software to meet with
an airline’s needs.
Inflight vision
Dutyfly Solutions’ focus over the past
year, marketing and even operational
actions, has been aimed at improving the inflight shopping experience.
“From product selection (more
changes, different types of products,
closer to trends) to flight attendant engagement, we propose
programmes to the airlines that aim
to turn passengers into buyers,” says
marketing and commercial director
Baptiste Duguit.
Key to improving the inflight
shopping experience will be
improving the EPOS and digital
media. “Dutyfly Solutions has integrated it within its inflight vision:
we provide our airlines with latest
services and technology when it
comes to purchasing on-board; we
work with them on a multi-channel
approach, connecting the passenger
on all touch-points (i.e. pre-order)
and technology is a great support in
customising our offers and improving
crew engagement,” explains Duguit.
“
ECR feels an all-in-one POS system works better for inflight retail
any of our solutions, can be tailormade by implementing some of
the airline’s business applications,
such as flight feedback software, the
onboard catalogue and promotional
materials for products sold inflight.”
In addition to the new EPOS,
the concessionaire is working
on a digital catalogue that can
be linked to the airline’s Inflight
Entertainment System. This will
provide new business opportunities, adding product promotion and
From product selection (more changes,
different types of products, closer to the
trends) to flight attendant engagement, we
propose programmes to the airlines that
aim to turn passengers into buyers
Baptiste Duguit
Dutyfly Solutions marketing and commercial director
Dutyfly Solutions’ in-house team
is currently working on a new EPOS
set to launch in the fourth quarter
of the year, which will be adaptable
to touch-screen tablets.
Duguit says: “The new EPOS is
modern, easy to use and will have a
customisable interface. It will have
greater connectivity as it will be
compatible with all Bluetooth and
WiFi devices. The new EPOS, like
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”
marketing that an airline can sell.
Duguit said the company had
already proposed the catalogue
for Iberia and Air France. “Our
team is working closely with both
airlines in order to reach the next
steps of this complementar y
onboard material. Furthermore, Air
Caraïbes is also offering to business
class passengers a tablet with a
digital version of the catalogue
including additional content,”he notes.
Newcomer into the inflight retail
space ECR, which currently works
with Rail Gourmet, part of SSP
and Newrest and in airport travelretail with World Duty Free Group,
launched new onboard payment solution, AirPoS, in March. The company
is in advanced talks with two national
carriers and a low-cost airline and
expects to go live with at least one
during the third quarter of the year.
CEO Simon Pont feels that
while many airlines and inflight
concessionaires are moving towards
tablet-based solutions, the traditional
handheld POS will prevail.
All-in-one
The AirPoS can run on either the
ECR Go! all-in-one hand-held
terminal device or ECR X2! tablet.
“Alternatively, it can run on other
tablets and devices but we strongly
recommend the use of products
that meet the exact requirements
of onboard retail,” says Pont.
The Go! all-in-one mobile handheld terminals can be used throughout
the aircraft and process Chip & PIN
card transactions either online via
onboard WiFi or offline, where there
is no air to ground connectivity. These
devices can issue instant legitimate
receipts and have barcode scanners.
Pont says: “We are finding flight
attendants prefer this lightweight and
truly mobile device over the alternative which is a separate tablet printer
and pin-pad. The limitation so far has
been the lack of a truly all-in-one
reliable and Payment Card Industryapproved device and we believe the
Go! is the answer to both IT and
retail requirements.”
Pont points out tablet-based solutions have the disadvantages of low
battery power and require WiFi and/
or GPRS to allow communications
with a head office.
“Our corporate opinion is that
it tends to be the crew that want
these devices. They are certainly
available, but you also need a credit
card terminal to take the payment
and then you need a printer—it
becomes less attractive than an allin-one solution,” says Pont.
Despite the aforementioned
challenges, the results will speak
for themselves once these products are launched with inflight
concessionaires. Space constraints
onboard may not help the argument
for using tablet-based solutions
as opposed to an all-in-one offer,
however, the merits of a tablet in
terms of crew engagement, ease of
use, speed of service and customisation could be what makes this
digital revolution a game-changer
for inflight retail.
July 2015 • Duty-Free News International
07/07/2015 10:42:07