ICT and e-business in the tourism industry ICT adoption ... - empirica

Tourism
4.3.5 Bar-coded boarding passes
Another initiative of IATA was the development of a standards regime for bar codes of
boarding passes. The aim was to reduce queues at airports and airline costs associated
with check-in processes. IATA describes the advantages as follows:
“Customers will be empowered to print their own boarding pass at home or at the
office and thus avoid queues for check-in. […]
Airlines will have more options for providing boarding passes using different
technologies. The use of bar codes for boarding passes will also facilitate the use
of e-ticketing.” (www.iata.org)
The use of bar coded documents rather than traditional boarding passes enables cost
savings, greater reliability and fewer mechanical problems that may arise with the
magnetic strip readers at the gate. Bar coded documents provide the option to place an
entire itinerary on one boarding document. This offers a natural link with e-ticketing. Most
recently, it has become possible not only to print boarding passes at the passenger’s
home, but also to place bar codes on the passenger’s cell phone 75 which makes a paper
document completely unnecessary (cf. www.iata.org, Bruyère 2006 76 ). As bar coding
technology allows the printing of a boarding pass at home or in the office, off-airport
check-in will become commonplace in the future, particularly for business travellers who
only travel with cabin luggage. Furthermore, biometrics might even facilitate self-boarding
of aircraft in the future. Yet, developments regarding biometrics are not shaped
independently by the airline industry, as it is an issue for public security in many fields
and therefore accompanied by a lot of political debate 77 .
Overall, the European airline industry is lagging behind its U.S. counterparts, as selfservice
technologies are being pioneered in the U.S. There, air travel has already largely
migrated online; about 56% of flight check-ins are conducted at kiosks and bar-coded
boarding passes have become mainstream (cf. Frankl 2006).
4.3.6 RFID for luggage handling
In the near future, the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology might
simplify airline baggage management considerably. It might improve customer service in
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76
77
For example, the German airline DBA provides a mobile check-in service to its customers
where passengers can check-in via their mobile phone and receive bar-coded boarding pass in
form of a MMS (Multimedia Message Service) on the display of their mobile phone. Currently,
this is provided in the form of a pilot project on a single domestic route within Germany, but DBA
plans to extend this service to further routes (cf. www.flydba.com; August 2006).
Information based on statements by Philippe Bruyère, Programme Director, Simplifying the
Business – IATA, presented in a panel discussion at the ITB Aviation Day on the occasion of
the ITB Berlin 2006, the International Tourism Convention in Berlin in March 2006.
The deployment of biometrics is expected to be discussed heavily in the future. Yet, this
discussion is clearly beyond the focus of this report and shall not be expanded here. For EU
legislation regarding the integration of biometrics in passports and travel documents see e.g.
http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l14154.htm For a discussion regarding the impacts of the
deployment of biometrics on society see e.g.
http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/doc_centre/freetravel/doc/biometrics_eur21585_en.pdf
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