Last month, we wrote about Virgin’s pilot scheme in using Google Glass technology to enhance their passenger’s experience. This month we hear that Virgin is leading the way in technology again as the announced that they are piloting Apple’s iBeacon location-aware software to deliver offers to their customers around Heathrow Airport.
If you’re an iPhone user, then it is possible that you’ve heard of iBeacon which came with iOS 7. The application, created by Estimote, uses a low-energy Bluetooth signal to create an indoor version of GPS and Virgin Atlantic are trialling its use at Heathrow to provide their customers with a range of offers, including no fee currency transactions, and real time messages which will be received the Passbook app on their iPhones as they travel through the airport.
For example, say you’re an Upper Class Virgin customer making your way to the private security gate; as you near the gate, iBeacon will locate you and message your iPhone to automatically retrieve your mobile boarding pass and display it on your phone ready for it to be scanned for boarding. Clever, huh?
James Shanahan, Head of eBusiness Development at Virgin, explained: “The beacons are very good at providing us with information on who you are and where you are so one of the things we are looking to do is, on arrival to the clubhouse, we can greet you by name and because we know who you are, we know what your favourite cocktail is and we can have one waiting at the bar as you walk on in.” He added: “Our customer base would be early adopters for this, so it’s a good fit for us to be working with Apple and with the technology for their benefit. We haven’t had anything negative yet.”
Experiments with iBeacon have been running for the last couple of months, with Virgin adding new functionality and aspects to develop a model of a customer’s journey through the airport, all using the beacons.
But it’s not just Virgin that are trialling… Tesco’s are also testing the iBeacon on their customers at a store not far from London! Power to the customer!