Is NFC ready for prime time? 2011 saw just four articles on Tnooz tagged with NFC (Near Field Communication), one of which was a futuristic video.

2012 will undoubtedly see a lot more written about NFC (starting here), but the real question is, will passengers see widespread use of NFC-enabled smartphones?

In truth, it’s unlikely.

In this article, I’ll go into some detail about some of the lessons we’ve learned during a SITA Lab proof of concept project (developed with Orange Business Services), list some problems limiting adoption, and what the industry is doing to address these problems.

Why NFC has value for passengers

NFC offers many benefits to the travel industry but I’ll focus on the passenger self-service uses identified by the IATA Fast Travel Programme, and highlighted in the joint GSMA/IATA document on mobile NFC for Air Travel.

Of course passengers can already use mobile boarding passes at self-service touch points in the airport – automatic security gates, lounge access, self-boarding. But the experience is not as smooth as it could be, especially at the point of use in the airport.

For example, with self-boarding the passenger has to visually present the barcode by unlocking the phone and then accessing a web URL or navigating through a phone app. In the SITA Passenger Self- Service Survey (2011), SITA found that 21% of passengers did not use a phone to board because it was perceived as too complex, and 12% cited the risk of the phone not functioning properly.

NFC promises a simpler experience as passengers simply place their phone on the reader and the boarding pass is read automatically. Passengers don’t even need to switch their phone on, they just “tap and go”.

For NFC to justify the costs of rollout and deliver real benefits it must simplify the passenger experience, and not just be a technology swap. And this makes the “tap and go” experience important.

But NFC phones are already here – what’s the problem?

The major device manufacturers have either released devices with NFC capabilities, or have announced that they will do so in 2012. But not all NFC phones are made equal, and what is not made clear is what type of NFC communications they support.

By and large, they all support basic NFC tag reading. But, the most exciting thing you can do with an NFC phone ’off the shelf’ is to hold your phone to an advert and get even more adverts. So, what are the different NFC types, and why does it matter?

NFC comes in several flavours:

1. Reader/writer mode.

The use case here is to tap your phone against a smart tag (e.g. embedded in a poster) to get more info about that poster, maybe launch a web page. The phone reads data from the tag.

This is a good way for a passenger to get data but not a good way for the airport touch points to get data from the passenger.

2. Peer to Peer mode.

Hold two NFC phones together, or hold a NFC phone to a device and the devices will exchange information. This data can be anything from business card data to videos, to passenger data.

But Peer to Peer mode is user-initiated and features proprietary data exchange protocols. Again, not a great way for the airport touch points to get data from the passenger.

3. Card Emulation mode.

In this mode, the phone emulates a contactless smart card (such as the London Underground Oyster Card). A reader (e.g. boarding gate) can read a boarding pass from the phone.

And crucially, it does this without any user interaction.

When it comes to simplifying the user experience, card emulation is the crown jewel of NFC. It is the only NFC mode that will let a device read data from a phone without requiring the phone user to initiate the process or even take any active part in the process.

But to understand how it does this is to understand some of the problems holding NFC back. So, let’s consider what happens in card emulation mode.

Cardlets – not your ordinary app

But first, an introduction to the Secure Element and cardlets. The Secure Element is a special chip on the phone that can store data and run cardlets. There are multiple implementations of the Secure Element:

• In the GSMA model, the SIM acts as the Secure Element.
• Google Wallet uses an embedded Secure Element
• Visa is proposing using a secure memory card

In all cases, the cardlet is an application that executes on the Secure Element to manage data. It runs in this secure environment outside of the main phone OS. A Secure Element can contain multiple cardlets – each cardlet has a unique ID.

So, in the self-boarding scenario, the following sequence of events happen:

• The passenger holds the phone near a boarding gate NFC reader
• Boarding gate reader selects the cardlet from the Secure Element using the pre-assigned cardlet ID (there may be multiple cardlets on the Secure Element)
• The cardlet validates that the boarding gate is authentic by using a secret challenge/response
• The boarding gate reader then issues a query to get the appropriate boarding pass from the cardlet. (there may be more than one boarding pass on the phone)
• The cardlet responds with a boarding pass (data is encoded in format IATA Resolution 792 just like 2DBCs)

This brings up several problems, for which there are currently no standard solutions. Some problems must be solved by the air transport industry, and some must be solved by the mobile industry (mobile network operators, device manufacturers and mobile operating system vendors).

Mobile Industry Challenges:

1. How do you install a cardlet app on the Secure Element?

Not through the app store, that’s for sure! An update to the Secure Element can typically only take place over a contactless interface (e.g. charging your Oyster card) or Over The Air (OTA) via a Trusted Service Manager. But the developer community needs an API or a Service for this.

2. How do you send the boarding pass data to the Secure Element?

Again, the developer community needs an API or a service for this.

Air Transport Industry Challenges:

The challenges facing the air transport industry are ensuring the appropriate boarding pass is presented securely to authorized readers. A passenger can have more than one boarding pass stored on the phone but a security or gate reader should get the appropriate boarding pass automatically.

The appropriate boarding pass depends on the location (airport), the date or time, and the context (passenger boarding a flight, at security, duty free, lounge access, etc.).

• A reader must know the cardlet ID in order to query that cardlet. Should there be one cardlet for the ATI? Or a cardlet per airline, per alliance, airport or country/region? Given that each cardlet app must be uniquely identified, who will manage and allocate unique cardlet IDs?
• How to ensure security and a consistent way to retrieve a boarding pass between the reader and the various NFC- enabled phones.

For the mobile industry issues, we are seeing solutions emerge from GSMA (promoting the use of the SIM as the Secure Element).

They have established the Open Mobile API initiative which has already been incorporated into some Android NFC devices as a way for the application to access the Secure Element in an Android NFC phone.

Google has its Google Wallet which uses the embedded Secure Element, but it is a closed shop and there are no public APIs for Secure Element access. The picture is less clear when it comes to the other players such as RIM, Nokia and Microsoft. Apple, as is the norm, is silent on the issue.

IATA is taking the lead in the air transport industry and the Fast Travel Workgroup is working through the problems and opportunities to define the necessary standards to ensure NFC boarding passes can be use consistently across different airlines and airports. Interoperable standards are key to the success and adoption of NFC.

Next steps?

In 2012, SITA Lab will continue with NFC as a research project, both with Orange Business Services and others. Our aim is to release the current proof of concept “into the wild” (albeit on a limited basis), and to continue to work with industry organisations – such as IATA – airlines and airports to establish global standards to ensure the NFC ecosystem is as interoperable as current e-ticketing or 2DBC services.

As an industry, air transport must push the mobile industry players to solve problems that are blocking adoption. Watch this space.

Here is a clip:

NB: This is a guest article by Kevin O’Sullivan, lead engineer at SITA Lab.

NB2: Image via Shutterstock.

According to the 8th annual SITA Airport IT Trends Survey, IT investment as a percentage of revenue, rose to 4.4% in 2010 compared to 3.6% in 2009.

Improving customer service has become the top driver for new technology investment for 63% of airport operators while airport safety and security also emerged as a top priority for 53%.

Reducing the cost of business ranked lower than in other years but is still a priority for 46% of respondents.

Overall the research found that more than half of airports are planning major investment to upgrade existing IT infrastructure to support passenger solutions.

• 53% of operators plan to increase the number of check-in kiosks
• 25% plan to introduce kiosks dedicated to other services
• 38% will have introducced e-gates for self-boarding by 2014
• 51% plan to have common-use bag drop locations

The annual SITA-Air Transport World passenger self-service survey found the number of passengers carrying smartphones has almost doubled in the past 12 months, jumping from 28% to 54%.

The figure soars to 74% of business and first class passengers and frequent flyers, with exactly three quarters of passengers passing through the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, carrying one.

SITA-ATW spoke to nearly 2,500 passengers at Abu Dhabi International Airport, Beijing International Airport, Frankfurt International Airport, Mumbai International and Sao Paulo Guarulhos.

The combined passenger numbers for the airports reached 283.5 million last year.

Highlights of survey:

• 73% would like to use mobile boarding passes, with 17% already having done so.
• Almost a quarter (23%) have used Bluetooth connections at an airport.
• Around a third (33%) use mobiles to check in – 36% for business and first class passengers.
• Over 50% of business and first class receive SMS text messages for alerts.
• Four out of five do NOT want to receive information about shopping deals at airports, although passengers at Abu Dhabi (34%), Beijing (32%) and Mumbai (30%) do.
• 75% of smartphone users would connect to a free wifi network at an airport and are generally looking to access trip-related information.
• The most popular activity when connected at the airport is information on flights (77%), security (50%), departure gate walking times (40%), directions (21%) and airport parking (21%).

According to figures from SITA’s 7th Annual Baggage Report it was $2.94 billion in 2010 for 29.4 million bags.

IATA is seeking a $1.2 billion saving on this in 2012.

Enter Amadeus and SITA who have teamed up to create Altea Baggage Tracking by integrating SITA BagMessage with Altea Departure Control.

Passengers will get real-time baggage status updates via their device of choice while the airlines will save time and money.

It’s win-win situation and sounds a far cry from the Heathrow Terminal 5 baggage nightmare in March 2008 when more than 20,000 bags were lost.

A  survey conducted by Amadeus in April found that 34% of passengers had been affected by baggage issues on their most recent flight.

Altea Baggage Tracking, which will also include worldwide reconciliation, is being implemented in 54 airports around the globe in the first phase.

As I expected in my lead-in article for HITEC, cloud computing was among the most discussed topics at this year’s show and the subject of one of the better attended educational sessions.

The cloud computing “supersession” was moderated by Horseshoe Bay Resort CIO, Lyle Worthington and featured a diverse group of panelists, including Rackspace CTO John Engates, Infor’s SVP of R&D Javier Buzzalino, PAR Springer-Miller President and CEO Larry Hall, and Charles Henderson, Trustwave’s director of application security services.

The presentations were pretty wide ranging in scope and depth, providing a little something for everyone. Rackspace’s Engates did a nice job of setting the context with a “Cloud 101″ presentation.

As fast as cloud computing adoption is growing – Rackspace’s cloud business was roughly $50 million in 2010 with a base of 60,000 customers – Engates predicted that enterprise adoption will reach 50% of all computing infrastructure by 2015.

Even as we’re near the top of the cloud hype cycle, that seemed high, until Engates clarified (over Twitter, from the podium) that the prediction included private and hybrid cloud implementations.

PAR’s participation was pretty timely given that it launched its cloud based next generation hospitality management system, called ATRIO Guest Experience Management, a few days before the start of the show.

ATRIO, developed for PAR Springer-Miller by a third party, was a ground-up development effort built on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform.

The effort began in Q4 2008, taking more than 2.5 years.  It was a big bet by PAR at a time of great financial uncertainty in the economy, but they hope it pays off. Initially PAR expected that 80%-85% of new deployments would be cloud based, but today believe that virtually all new implementations (98%-99%) will be based on ATRIO.

For me the pièce de résistance was the presentation by Infor’s Buzzalino who leads Infor’s 600-person R&D organization.

He didn’t just go deep, he went Jules-Verne-Journey-to-the-Center-of-the-Earth deep into application architecture for the cloud.

Buzzalino discussed the benefits of multi-tiered architectures, the impact of multi-tenancy on scalability, the benefits of the NoSQL movement has for the cloud (traditional SQL databases were not designed for the cloud and horizontal partitioning only gets you so far), and many other topics.

One angle that he discussed, which I thought was particularly intriguing, was the role of “governors” in a multi-tenant environment.

These governors put restrictions on what one tenant can do to ensure that they don’t consume so many computing resources that it crushes the application performance for other customers.

For me, Buzzalino’s presentation was outstanding not only in its technical depth, but that he was able to make the concepts accessible to the members of the audience who were not architects (that means all of us).

And even though some of the content may have went over the heads of parts of the audience, you couldn’t help but leave the presentation feeling impressed by the technical leadership of the Infor team and confident that they’re providing a true enterprise-class solution.

At its Air Transport IT Summit in Brussels last week,  SITA announced a partnership with Orange Business Services to jointly develop a “managed cloud computing infrastructure”.

SITA calls it the ATI Cloud [PDF] (Air Transport Industry Cloud).

Cloud computing, of course, isn’t new. Essentially it is on-demand computing paid for by the drip rather than for the individual component of hardware, software and managed services. It is a shared platform on which computing resources are provided to a wide array of users over a common infrastructure.

The community cloud concept would make sense for SITA and its large airline customer base. SITA has always had a community-based pricing structure. Airlines share many resources. They share airline services and inter-connect at many points.

Many airlines are also focused on being more efficient and outsourcing everything that is not core to their operations.

At the conference, Lufthansa CIO Christoph Klingenberg supported the concept of cloud computing, saying airline IT development of all kinds should be outsourced.

Cynics in the audience may view the SITA initiative as another attempt by IT vendors to boost IT spending and line their pockets after several lean years.

But, the logic for cloud-based computing is inescapable. While the business case is largely about the cost, the cloud is not just about dollars and cents. Cloud computing also simplifies the use of computing assets; it enables rapid deployment and makes IT accountable to the speed of business.

Airlines need flexibility and scalable IT services. Airport IT services, for example, need to accommodate a range of capabilities for  a single flight operation a few times a week and to scale it into a 24/7 hub-type operation. In irregular operations, as occurred during the 2010 winter storms and ash clouds, the nature of operations may change with only hours’ notice.

The goals of the SITA airline cloud are admirable. The widely quoted 100ms (milliseconds) speed should be welcomed by airline executives who remember ALC terminals with sub-2 second response times as standard in the days of hardwired dumb green screen terminals (such as the Westinghouse 1642s).

Plus the ability to set up a new access to your reservations system within minutes rather than days and weeks, for example, would enable flexibility that airlines can only dream about.

However, the airlines and SITA’s managers must not impose the same legacy thinking that has held back innovation in the airline IT space, particularly in distribution.

In Brussels there was a lot of talk comparing airlines (not favourably) to Apple. Lauding Apple’s rise to the top, many speakers used words like “agility” and “focus.”

And this is where things could go awry. Apple imposes strict and commercially harsh terms on its vendors and users. The better model would probably be Amazon’s open cloud-based computing environment.

Unfortunately, SITA already is talking about a certification process. Such a process would  restrict innovation and result in the perpetuation of the lowest common denominator approach.

It would be better for SITA to make the platform open and encourage its use for services not constrained to airlines alone. This is where standards will be important, but they should enable –not restrict — innovation and meet the needs of the business.

Airlines have been slow to adopt cloud computing, but the announcement from SITA and its partner, Orange (aka France Telecom), will legitimize the cloud community approach.

Cloud computing also has long-term implications for airline IT, especially Passenger Service Systems (central airline reservations systems), which typically are hugely expensive and protracted projects.

Klingenberg of Lufthansa matter-of-factly spoke about his new 200 million euro DCS (Departure Control System). Another speaker spoke about his 5-6 year project to deliver a new reservations system.

Cloud computing promotes agility and rapid deployment. Application development is about light, small and fast.

SITA would do well to ensure that its commercial model for cloud computing is structured to promote the agility that has come to characterize the B2C marketplace for apps from Apple, Google and others. This approach enables users to download a new version of the app either on demand or automatically without any computing skills at all.

For the airline business, this will provide many benefits if the processes and management also change. Without this radical change, the benefits of cloud computing will at best be muted, and  at worst lost or wasted altogether.

Cloud computing is about decentralization benefiting any user type as well as complex computer applications.

The promise of a totally flexible platform will also alleviate the needs for centralized services such as GDSs and encourage open distribution models.

With this approach, airlines would be able to reduce their dependency on monolithic systems and their attendant cost models, get closer to their customers and regain control of their product supply systems.

Unveiled at SITA’s Air Transport IT Summit in Brussels today, Horizon PaymentServices is part of the organization’s Horizon Passenger Service System.

For “a low cost” transaction,  the infrastructure can provide a single entry point to the world of payment services with a wide variety of different payment vendors and types enabled. It will have a business rule service so that the single connection can support multiple rule sets for each channel as required.

Horizon PaymentServices, which is available to airlines whether they are Horizon customers or not, in theory will have value for the airlines.

By simplifying the plethora of functions and requirements to have multiple payment gateways,  this multi-currency, multilingual platform will not replace payment service providers, but will simplify the connection process.

For many airlines, this will enable them to save money and eliminate the number of gateways they currently use.

These clearly are early days, but this service holds great promise in enabling airlines to gain back some control over their payment processes.

Will it save them money over the long run? I believe so. However, it will require the airlines to be better managers.

The new platform is no panacea, but it was certain that something needed to be done. For those in the payment gateway business, the new product serves notice that the airline world is opening up.

For the airlines,  a new era of control becomes possible. Let’s hope that the cost structure is commensurate with the service provision and that Horizon PaymentServices doesn’t end up being cost and bureaucracy additive.

Airlines have long been struggling with the entire payments process, and this has been a festering sore in their financial models.

With the vast majority of their transactions paid by credit cards, airlines know that this is a big expense, one that’s right up there with the cost of GDS distribution.

Big payment providers, such as American Express, Visa and Mastercard, and smaller or regional players, including Diners Club-Carte Blanche, JCB and Discover have been joined recently by newer providers like Paypal and Western Union.

The airlines’ own payment facility, UATP, is deployed widely. But this creates an immense complexity for the different channels the airlines utilize for distribution.

In the past, the payment/credit card battle has escalated into all-out wars between airlines and their payment providers. For example, in the early years of the new millenium, there was a big battle between British Airways and American Express over the level of the fee.

BA even filed a lawsuit in 2002, and the litigation eventually was settled three years later. Today, BA offers a branded American Express card.

Credit card fraud is a problem for all businesses, particularly those which operate online, and airlines are no exception. There are a dizzying array of choices, many of which are specific to the channel. And online fraud protection is very tight compared with looser and different payment  systems for the call centre and offline fulfillment processes.

As fraud protections were tightened with such services as 3-D Secure, the percentage of failed, but valid transactions increased. Thus, many airlines are faced with the dilemma of tight antifraud practices with low fraud rates, but high failure rates for valid sales. The alternative is higher percentage of successful approved sales, but increased fraud. This is a dilemma which no airlines like, with rates on both sides of the battle sometimes more than 10%.

SITA says Horizon PaymentServices has embedded “sophisticated fraud screening.”

“These sophisticated settings, combined with advanced reporting systems, give airlines the maximum control in this complex sales environment,” SITA says.

That’s the hope.

Launched at the World Air Transport Summit in Singapore, IATA has combined technology with a new approach to identifying threat levels posed by passengers and taking steps to establish whether they threaten the safety of an aircraft.

The screening units are three separate tunnels labelled “Stranger”, “Normal” and “Known Traveller”.

If and when the system is implemented at airports, security staff will select which particular part of the unit each passenger should pass through.

IATA says:

“The determination will be based on a biometric identifier in the passport or other travel document that triggers the results of a risk assessment conducted by government before the passenger arrives at the airport.”

If a traveller is “known” (having registered and completed background checks with government authorities), passengers will pass through quickly.

The “normal” screening will be for the majority of travellers, IATA says, with fewer technology-led checks than those in the “stranger” tunnel.

Screening will include retina tests, fingerprinting, body scanning, and metal and liquid detection technology.

IATA says:

“Screening technology is being developed that will allow passengers to walk through the checkpoint without having to remove clothes or unpack their belongings. Moreover, it is envisioned that the security process could be combined with outbound customs and immigration procedures, further streamlining the passenger experience.”

The project is at an early phase, but IATA says it is in talks with 19 governments around the world to develop the technology and processes further.

Biometric scanning and the “three-lane concept” is ready now, claims IATA director general and CEO, Giovanni Bisignani, with a prediction that some of the technology will be developed further and become part of major changes to how airports handle security being within two to three years.

The service is an extension of the existing WorldTracer system provided by SITA, is backed by global aviation organisation IATA and uses flight data from Innovata.

While more than 450 airlines and ground staff use the existing WorldTracer at 2,200 airports around the world for baggage tracing, WorldTracerWeb Mobile will boost efforts further by placing the hard data as to potential whereabouts of a lost item in the hands of agents in baggage halls and elsewhere around an airport.

SITA reckons than one in eight pieces of lost luggage are intended for connecting flights at an airport, meaning that inevitably the item must be scheduled for carriage on a flight not associated with the passenger.

The new mobile service will allow agents on the ground to file a report and process the re-routing of any lost baggage with the passenger in the airport.

The system was trialled at Prague Airport in the Czech Republic capital ahead of its full launch this week.

Airport ICT operations manager Martin Sýkora says:

“During the pilot our agents in Prague were able to offer prompt service to passengers allowing them to quickly file a baggage claim.

“The flexibility of the service means that staff can be allocated when, and where, they are needed to tackle any mishandled luggage and to reduce the time it takes to re-unite passengers with their bags.”

SITA claims although there is a general downward trend over the past four years in the number of items going missing around the world, 2010 saw a slight rise due to the major disruptions experienced as a result of the Icelandic ash cloud.

Have you ever met anyone who has climbed Mount Everest? Have you ever met anyone who has been to Base Camp, the launch pad for the haul up the mountain?

I haven’t, but if I did, I’d definitely think “Wow, that’s cool”.

I’d probably think that the emotional reward of such an arduous journey would be amazing, even if you didn’t actually make it to the summit. Just reaching Base Camp is way more than I’ve ever done.

I suspect many of us would think this. And that’s pretty much how most folks feel about the adventure and the risk associated with creating an web startup company.

They’ve quit their jobs, they’re living on Raman noodles, they’re coding through the night with no sleep.

They just launched a really amazing new way to look at “travel search” or to “plan my trip”, or “share my experiences from my trip”. And they’ve already got 50,000 users. That’s like climbing Mount Everest!

Except, getting to Base Camp on Everest only costs about $1,500, takes less than a week, and isn’t particularly difficult.

The main thing required to get to Base Camp is DECIDING to go to Base Camp. After that it’s just a matter of turning intention into a few concrete actions.

That’s the innovation at the heart of most travel technology startups, except reaching the summit of Mount Everest in travel tech is simply a LOT HARDER and a LOT MORE EXPENSIVE.

Much has been written about how the GDS model of data distribution is the barrier to innovation in travel.

Everyone complains about how they can’t get data in the way they want to, or that it’s too expensive, or that the APIs from the GDS don’t answer the questions they want to ask, and if they could only just get access to the raw data, they’re sure they could do a better job than the GDSs.

I’m pretty sure too – but it’s not going to happen, especially as the reason is a lot weirder than you’d think

Let’s examine the basic costs facing a startup that want to “play around” with raw travel Data.

Fares (the prices and rules for airline inventory), this will cost you a minimum of $35,000 per month, no matter how you slice or dice it, directly from ATPCO.

Schedules from OAG, while not as expensive, are still in the $10,000+ per month range.

Taxes and geography data from IATA are the cheapest, but they’re still more expensive than most startup’s entire monthly payroll.

And if you want to get fares for the 20% of the world’s airlines (like Air Bulgaria) that ATPCO doesn’t carry, expect to pay SITA a comparable amount.

Loose mathematics here, but we’re talking about in excess of $100,000 for raw data access, before you can even write a single line of code.

The disappointing part of this little secret is that it serves only to benefit the GDS’s. This tremendous barrier to low layer innovation only serves to keep players out of the primary innovation space.

So for all of their whining about how they’re being held hostage by the GDSs, it is airlines which control the data (they create it after all, and they jointly own ATPCO).

If hundreds of startups had access to the raw data, the GDSs would face real competition (not just from one or two players like ITA Software, Everbread and the other startups that are attempting to scale Mount Everest).

This would return the power of market forces back to the airlines (the product after all) and their customers.

GDSs can still provide a valuable service, but they might have to actually work for their market share, if the raw data was more affordable to the hundreds of two guys in their garage who want to start a travel startup.

My proposal: startup friendly raw data contract models.

ATPCO already supports a revenue sharing contract model. Unfortunately, that still sits on top of a base monthly fee of $35,000 per month.

The best and easiest thing all the airlines can do is to vote to change this structure.

If the monthly fee was as low as $5,000 with a high 5% revenue sharing model, ATPCO’s customer base would likely swell by an extra 100 companies tomorrow.

They’d make up in volume what they get today from a handful of companies who can afford it. It would not require technical changes on ATPCO’s part.

The most difficult part would be getting the airlines to agree to do it.

[I fully expect the first comment to be: "But AIRLINES do not want lots of companies having access to their fares"].

NB: This is a guest article by Ashley Raiteri, an industry consultant and former-chief technology officer at Everbread.

In this first part, I am addressing the myths. Later I will look at the options for the next generation for search. There has been an overarching assumption amongst consumers and non-travel people that online travel agencies (OTA) find for the consumer the best prices.

It is the core reason people use OTAs. But since the arrival of search, and metasearch more than five years ago, this myth has been somewhat expunged.

Those who check travel frequently either on a generalist or even a specific nature, know this is a myth. And, in general, trust in the OTAs has been eroded. However the emergence of a credible trusted solution for search has been the problem.

And in case you think I am going to be down on just search folk, there really is enough blame to go around.

So, let’s look at the list of players who are making the thing so damn complicated:

Metasearch is actually a pretty poor experience. How many times does the exit (the result which sends you onto another site) actually lead to a successful AND seamless experience all the way through?

The answer is RARELY.

But consumers are so punch drunk as to accept this as okay behavior, when we all know that we would not accept this type of treatment in a personal service situation. Let’s be honest… many people know this to be true.

I find Skyscanner and FareCompare as the best of the bunch for search in being the most honest about trying to do the right thing.

I find the others hard to work with. Airlines carry a lot of blame, but it’s seen as a necessary evil. It is against an airline’s DNA to want to have basic transparency in pricing, but that does not mean that they have to accept that the daggers being thrown by the likes of the OpenAllies group are necessarily accurate.

The airlines all provide the information to a greater or at the minimal level that the regulatory bodies allow. Because airline pricing is a very complicated process with thousands of possible parameters and choice options.

Whenever I hear someone talking about how difficult it is to get an answer from an air search – I enjoy walking them through that process. Then they tend to get my point.

The players thus far are to be applauded in making the whole process work as well as it has. However that being said, “good enough” is no longer good enough.

The providers of the raw data, ATPCO, and the purveyors of the information, the GDSs, have never done a really good job, mostly due to technical limitations in the original architecture.

So now there are commercial business model conflicts caused by the need for the GDSs to retain search as a lock into the legacy model.

On the data source side ATPCO never has to provide a trusted result, so the interpreters of the data are left to “create” results, and then force some form of trust into them.

The entrance of SITA who DOES validate its own results with a fares and pricing engine into the US market may improve things, but the jury will be out on that for a while.

Travel Search 1.0 was based on the concept of an unique search (fire once and forget it) and set of results, one at a time. However that didn’t scale too well.

So along came caching – an optimization technique that addresses scaling the search process. However the results can change. Caching is as inefficient as direct results in singularity.

Throw in married segment logic and the demand for recognized user requests and the recipe is bound to result in trouble.

Again most users think it must be just them when they see failures or inconsistent results. The issue is the number of times the result is different.

So travel search is a pretty appalling experience – way worse than it COULD be and definitely worse than it SHOULD be. I can see why Google wants to (and clearly thinks it can) do a better job – not just from an economic perspective.

Let me illustrate my point in just a single search I did a few weeks back. My goal was to illustrate that the same airline could have different pricing for the same product – i.e. the same seat on the same plane could be presented so many different ways and with such variations in pricing.

The premise I used to think was correct was that the OPERATING carrier had the lowest fare. Even that doesn’t hold water as we can see in the attached five examples – three neutral sites and two airline sites.

I chose a date of April 20 2011- in other words, more than 21 days out. But also a busy day (the week prior to Easter).

I did the search on Expedia (this is an older picture, as it still doesn’t have American Airlines) and several other sites, had to modify the parameters to force the results to bring it down to an acceptable list.

At the time, AA was totally out of Expedia and Orbitz. But it were in Cheaptickets still… Go figure. So when you see which site had the absolute lowest price. It was a code share on Aer Lingus (EI) with United (UA).

My point here is to show that the definition of lowest fare varies and, therefore, the possibilities change.

Furthermore, the exact results can vary by a significant amount. In my view this tells me that I will only get the indicative prices on an OTA or meta search and the real one on the airline’s website.

Expedia:

Priceline:

Cheaptickets:

American Airlines:

British Airways:

I think you get my point the pricing is just… different.

In the next part, I will lay out what can be done to address the problem and where we can expect positive results and better experience for the customer.

I will also have a prognosis for search and some good examples of what is happening now.

• Fotopedia launches iPad app for visitors to Paris. Similar to other Fotopedia products, images and content have been collected from thousands of web users around the world. Full story.

• Review site Vinini unveils service specifically for UK travellers. The company, which also powers the Travelport Opinions agent review service, claims to have a verification system in place to prevent fraudulent reviews being posted on the site. It currently has around 41,000 properties worldwide listed on the system and also boasts around 100,000 user generated photos an 2,500 videos.

• UK-based car hire service USRentaCar has released its first mobile smartphone application. The app for the Apple iPhone is “not designed to make reservations and not designed to make money”, but as a method to deliver booking confirmation vouchers to customers so that they can be used in-resort when collecting vehicles.

• Pegasus brand Utell joins forces with Egyptian marketing company Marketer. The agreement will see Marketer’s hotels connected to GDSs and other systems via the Pegasus Solutions switch. Full story.

• SITA commits to building a “community cloud dedicated to the air transport industry”. The ATI Cloud, launching in June 2011, will be based on six large regional virtual data centres across five continents, allowing SITA’s array of products to be accessed on-demand and managed anywhere. Full story.

Until now augmented reality platforms have been primarily focused outdoors as the GPS signals required for high quality geo-positioning do not penetrate concrete and other building materials.

Copenhagen Airport, which already has a moderately successful iPhone app (100,000 downloads and counting since December 2010), has worked with SITA Lab to develop an AR function for the service by using technology contained within the confines of the airport terminals.

The AR tool will use “triangulation and signal strength” from existing wifi points scattered throughout the airport to determine the location of the user.

The technology, similar to other AR services outside, then calculates what the user is looking at through the handset’s mobile device and feeds in the appropriate functions.

The app will plot relevant information such as location and directions of gates, shops, restaurants and other services.

The enhanced app is expected to hit the iTunes appstore in the next few weeks.

The company has had some limited distribution capability for decades but has now been given clearance by the US Department of Transport and the Canadian Transportation Agency so that it can join ATPCO and distribute data for airlines operating anywhere in the region.

Until now, airlines (domestic, international or inbound carrier) could only use ATPCO to connect fares to GDSs or online travel agencies.

The decision by the DoT and CTA, alongside the simultaneous launch of an enhanced Total Fares Management system by SITA, effectively means the Geneva and Atlanta-based company can provide what it calls an “end-to-end solution” to airlines.

The previous SITA system, in place for almost 25 years, was essentially a filing and distribution platform for tickets, but was restricted in North America due to the exclusive deal with ATPCO.

The new service will also include enhanced search and shopping capability for tickets, as well as rules and analytics systems, so airlines can better manage distribution into intermediaries and the GDSs.

SITA vice president of passenger solutions, Brian Cook, claims many of its existing airline customers (the company has a string of agreements around the world to provide technology to carriers) are keen to shift “all their fares” to SITA now that approval has been granted by regulators.

“We will now actively engage not only with these airlines, but also with the GDSs, OTAs and pricing system providers, to deliver on our promise of an alternative fare filing offering in this region.”

But many that have observed the evolution of fares distribution generally will note that it is the search and shopping element of the new and enhanced system that is likely to attract the interest of airlines, many of which until now have preferred existing systems due to the strength of the platform.

SITA’s move comes nine months after it signed a deal with the Travelsky GDS to establish a fare pricing system for carriers operating in and into China.

Created in conjunction with long-term technology partner SITA, visitors to the Malaysia Airlines Facebook page will now see a new tab alongside the usual Wall, Photos, Competition-type stuff is located.

The first element of MHBuddy, as it is known, is a simple search engine for any flight on the MA network (not codeshares as yet), allowing users to see outbound and inbound options, times and prices.

Users can also make a completely secure booking for the ticket(s) from within the system.

This is still not particularly new, with Delta one of just a few carriers to incorporate ticket search and booking with full payments into a Facebook module.

But from here on is where it gets very interesting…

During the search and booking phase, users can open an additional box to see if any of their Facebook friends are on the same flight or expected to be in the same destination during the selected date range.

Users can then send a message to notify them of their trip plans.

Fast forward to just before the outbound flight and passengers can now check-in for the flight from within the module, obtaining an email booking reference and boarding pass or, on domestic routes, an SMS mobile boarding card.

From within the check-in system a user can also select a seat for the journey, confirming before the boarding pass is printed.

But given that this is Facebook and it is all about the network, users can also check to see where their friends are sitting and make sure a group can sit together, or as close as required.

Of course, users can then ensure everyone knows about their plans by sharing in the usual way.

Kevin O’Sullivan of SITA Lab, a division within SITA which built the system, says over time additional functionality will be added to the travel management aspect of MHBuddy to include some of the existing services on the main Malaysia Airlines site, such as redeeming loyalty points and meal selection.

The sharing of flight data and seat selection is automatically defaulted to non-share, O’Sullivan stresses, meaning that such information will only be passed or displayed on a user’s network with their permission – a hugely important consideration given the privacy controversies in which Facebook has found itself in recent years.

Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time Malaysia Airlines has stuck its neck out with new services ahead of many other airlines.

In June 2010 it was one of the first carriers to build a self-service kiosk using the Apple iPad for Kuala Lumpur railway station. It also created an augmented reality service for its iPhone application to point users in the direction of deals and services.

Edd McArdle and Riaan van Schoor (Inside Group)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg4a7Bw1kjU

Stuart Grant (GeoMe)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPa_N0yjoME

Paul Slugocki (TourCMS)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_4_ck1AFzQ

…and Tuesday’s bronze place, which went to James Dunford Wood and Alastair James of Worldreviewer.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmI4hLDuMVo

Here the author outlines the idea behind the event, filmed during Part One at TechHub in London on 30 January 2011.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdN4WrPkn4E

NB: Thanks to QunoSpotter for shooting the clips from Travel Technology Europe.

The event, produced in conjunction with Expedia UK, saw developers from across the industry take part, using a number of normally closed APIs as well as others freely available on the web.

Winning the gold prize at the event in London this week was an entry from Kevin O’Sullivan of SITA Lab, combining APIs made available exclusively for the event from flight search startup Everbread, tours and activity reservation system TourCMS and social planning service TripBod, with the Android mobile voice recognition software, HTML5 code and Google Maps.

The hack worked by allowing a user to search for flights on a mobile simply by speaking into the handset. Similar searches for what’s on offer in the local area can also be carried out, as well as finding a local “tripbod”.

Details of the flights, activities and the tripbod service are all streamed back to the mobile.

The judges of THack London (Alex Gisbert of Expedia, Timothy O’Neil-Dunne of T2Impact and Sally Broom of Tripbod) had this to say about O’Sullivan’s effort:

“The intro of voice as a way of searching travel was highly original and the presentation of the various options for use led the judges to believe this was also commercially very viable. The ability to match voice with a multiple data sources scored highly with the judging panel.”

Here is a clip of O’Sullivan demonstrating some of the features (the video was shown as part of his presentation to the judges and audience at Travel Technology Europe this week):

The judges awarded the silver place to James Addison of Skyscanner for his hack, Advent. The service is a ad serving system using Expedia and Everbread’s APIs for flight comparison within advertising units.

Addison explains the hack here in this clip.

The judges:

“An innovative approach to a large untapped market with huge potential. The judges liked the simplicity yet effectiveness of the concept and it ease of implementation makes the concept very scalable.”

Bronze went to James Dunford Wood and Alastair James of Worldreviewer for their project known as Spin. The hack combined flight search from Expedia and tour operators Thomas Cook, Thomson and First Choice with content from TourCMS, TripBod and Flickr.

Gisbert, O’Neil-Dunne and Broom were impressed with the final result:

“A fantastic iteration of something that has been done by others such as Kayak and Opodo, but with much less resource. The judges, however, valued the creative use of multiple APIs and outstanding UI.”

The other participants at the event were:

• Paul Slugocki (TourCMS)
• Edd McArdle and Riaan van Schoor (Inside Group)
• Stuart Grant (GeoMe)

The judges were enormously impressed with the level of effort, creativity and imagination that went into every single one of the products created for THack.

Slugocki created a fantastic modular ad system for TripBod services to run on other websites; McArdle and van Schoor took flight search to a wonderfully creative new level with bouncing balls; Grant combined an astonishing numbers of APIs for a n extremely slick events and content search service.

Here is the full presentation from this week, including the other hacks.

Under the agreement, Bluelon’s bluetooth-led system will be included out as part of SITA’s technology packages with airports around the world.

Bluelon’s iQueue has already been installed at a number of the world’s biggest and busiest airports including London Heathrow and Frankfurt. Working alongside SITA will see it potentially distributed to hundreds more around the world.

The system works by tracking and monitoring passenger flows around airport areas, such as main terminals, duty free zones, baggage collection and immigration lines.

Officials are alerted when certain levels are reached, presumably so that extra staff or desks can be opened to help with congested areas.

Bluelon claims the technology behind the system has been perfected over eight years of research and development, although the algorithm for tracking passenger movements is still patent-pending.

Worth pointing out that the Bluelon iQueue system is not related at all to the iQueue tourist site queue saving system.

The idea behind the technology is clearly to try and help alleviate incidents like this at London Heathrow in February 2007. This was apparently the queue for security screening:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4xba_YFHj8

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The US-based Com-Net will form part of SITA’s airport solution division with its flight information display systems and digital audio paging tools for ground crew.

The company currently has 59 airport customers around North America including Denver International, LAX and La Guardia in New York. Airlines using its tools include Delta, US Airways and Southwest.

Alongside airport technology, Com-Net also produces signage systems for hotels and and vehicle dealerships.

SITA says the acquisition will allow it to enhance its “intelligent airport” product range to streamline existing systems with new technology and processes.

SITA says those using airline websites to book accommodation jumped from 21% in 2009 to 38% in the latest, 2010 edition of the annual study.

A similar figure – 19% to 35% over a 12 month period – could be found for those opting to buy car hire.

This is indeed a significant increase and the obvious question is who is missing out if travellers are buying non-air products on websites other than online travel agencies, or direct from hotels and car hire firms?

SITA says it only has its data to go on and can offer no ready explanation or point of view as to why the massive shift.

However, it is worth nothing that the research methodology has changed slightly since 2009, perhaps explaining part of the wrinkle in the data.

The study interviewed passengers at seven major international airports around the world, including Moscow, Atlanta, Mumbai, Sao Paolo and Johannesburg.

But, for example, SITA surveyed passengers at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport in 2009 but switched to Frankfurt in 2010. Only 5.7% of Paris customers booked a hotel on an airline website in 2009 as opposed to 31.5% in Frankfurt.

In addition, a airport included in the research for the first, Beijing had a massive percentage booking on an airline site (52.2%).

Nevertheless, data from individual airports did illustrate the headline trend – Sao Paulo, for example, jumped from 17.9% to 50.4% in a year.

Meanwhile, other interesting findings in the SITA survey:

• Percentage of passengers using mobiles to check-in on day of survey: 3%
• Percentage used mobile for check-in at any time: up from 14% in 2009 to 23% in 2010.
• Regular use of online check-in: 61%.
• Regular use of kiosk check-in: 71%.