Touchless technology:
The shift towards touchless travel is accelerating amid the pandemic. Gill Upton outlines the latest developments
The acceleration of the move to contactless travel
Return-to-travel strategies are taking many shapes and forms but two items prevail: duty of care to the traveller and minimising human and machine interaction. It seems the postcovid-19 ‘new normal’ is seeing an acceleration towards innovative and digital transformation strategies which redefine hotel, car, airport and airline experiences for travellers.
Industry observers hope new contactless technology will help restore confidence in the battered travel industry.
“We’re seeing a drive for touchless across all aspects of life but especially in travel, and in every category of travel from air to hotels to car rentals,” says Mark Mcspadden, VP Global Product Strategy and Experience for American Express Global Business Travel.
Airports are installing AI and biometricpowered face recognition and thermal sensing for a seamless, hygienic customer experience. Star Alliance member airlines in Europe launched a biometric programme in the summer which negates the need for passengers to show their passport or boarding pass at the airport. Their biometric identity will travel with them to any airport or on any airline within the alliance.
Airlines including Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss and KLM have instigated electronic bag tag technology, which has removed passenger check-in from the airport. Lufthansa has taken it one step further with a contactless bag tracing service at selected German airports for passengers to report delayed luggage. The service uses technology from SITA and early trials showed two-thirds of passengers opted to use the service instead of visiting a baggage counter.
Emirates has introduced 16 self-service bag drop machines and eight self-service kiosks at Terminal 3 at Dubai International Airport.
The kiosks will be continually upgraded to offer new features, including going touchless and enabling customers to make rebookings on their own. More self-service facilities are also planned in the coming months.
In early October, Lyon Saint Exopery Airport became the world’s first airport to introduce facial recognition technology which allows passengers to complete the entire airport journey (except for border control) without physical contact.
Called Mona, travellers download a free app to their smartphone and use dedicated lanes to pass through the airport – from bag drop to boarding – simply by showing their face. Developed in close collaboration with the French Civil Aviation Authority, the airport’s operator, VINCI, has launched a one-year trial for passengers travelling through the airport with Transavia (on flights to Porto) and TAP Air Portugal (on flights to
Lisbon). If successful, travellers can expect to see it rolled out to VINCI’S other 44 airports worldwide, which are mostly in France and Portugal but also include London Gatwick and Belfast in the UK.
Of course, there was a shift towards touchless before Covid. Delta Air Lines launched a virtual queuing feature on its app, which lets passengers know when their seat is boarding. Etihad and Avalon Airport in Australia trialled contactless technologies to control self-service devices using head movement rather than touching a screen.
The touchless experience at Heathrow was already underway with increased use of biometric e-gates and trials of 3D security scanners to reduce the need for bag search, for example. It is also looking into technologies that would remove the need for passengers to touch self-service check-in machines, allowing them to control the kiosks from their phones
“We understand that it is likely that postcovid there will be a new normal, one which prevents a pandemic of this scale from ever occurring again,” says Steve Armitage, Head of Technology, Design and Integration at Heathrow. “To achieve this with minimal impact to the airport experience, technology will need to play an even greater role. New technology will be key to helping us provide a touchless experience.”