Spanair Celebrates First Year With NeoMedia

Mobile check-in has landed in airports across Spain following the introduction of a paperless ticketing service by Spanish carrier Spanair Airlines. Paper boarding passes can now be replaced by an electronic 2D barcode received via MMS and stored by the passenger’s mobile phone. The system is enabled by NeoMedia Technologies, which has to date installed its EXIO scanners in eleven Spanish airports. The scanners read the 2D codes on the phones at the airport terminal check-in desks and security points.

With the widespread installation of the streamlined and convenient service across Spanish airports, Spanair has forecast that 800,000 2D barcode mobile tickets will be issued in 2009 – some ten per cent of its total ticketing transactions.

Spanair was the first airline in Spain to offer its passengers mobile check-in, following the publication by IATA of a mobile boarding standard based on two-dimensional codes. The technology was piloted in the airports of Bilbao, Madrid and Barcelona, initiating a service that could save the airline industry up to $500 million each year.

Earlier this year industry analysts Juniper Research estimated that transport-based mobile ticketing will grow from 37.4 million transactions in 2007 to just over 1.8 billion by 2011, with some 2.6 billion mobile tickets in total being issued by 2011 to 208 million mobile phone users.

“Our mobile check-in system is proving to be the fastest way to get on the plane in Spain. It’s innovative, efficient and offers great benefits in terms of both time and convenience – advantages that are particularly appreciated by our business customers,” said Sergio Allard, Chief Commercial Officer, Spanair.

"This is a fantastic success story that underlines the simplicity and elegance of the mobile 2D barcode,” said Iain McCready, CEO of NeoMedia. “Implementing mobile ticketing expands Spanair’s customer service offering in an innovative way and increases customer convenience significantly – it’s a win/win scenario. NeoMedia’s scanners can be integrated into many different systems and used for a wide variety of mobile CRM solutions (ticketing, couponing, loyalty) and payment systems. With the mobile device increasingly used as a tool for business, it makes absolute sense to utilize it in as many ways as possible to streamline services for both business and consumer users."

Gavitec's Mobile Check-In At Barcelona Airport

Gavitec AG - mobile digit, a NeoMedia Technologies company and the leading provider of mobile ticketing and marketing solutions, partnered with Spanair to launch a new mobile boarding pass service.

The state of the art technology was tested at two Spanish airports - Madrid and Bilbao - and has been extended to Barcelona due to it's overwhelming success.

November of last year, Spanair launched its new Mobile Boarding Pass service, thus becoming the first airline to offer its passengers this type of mobile ticketing service.

To obtain a mobile boarding pass, passengers will be required to check-in using the web-based check-in service at spanair.com, or by connecting to the internet with a mobile phone via the new mobile check-in service at spanair.mobi, which was launched in tandem with the mobile boarding pass service. At the end of the process, the passenger is asked for his or her mobile number, to which Spanair will send the corresponding multimedia message (MMS) free of charge. The multimedia message contains an image with a two-dimensional barcode, which transmits all the information necessary to execute automated boarding, as well as a text information section with all travel details.

In order to use this system, passengers simply need to pass the 2D barcode sent to their mobile phone over the Gavitec EXIO scanners at the Madrid, Bilbao, and Barcelona airports. In doing so, they will obtain a paper receipt with which they will be able to pass through security and proceed to boarding.

Pablo Sánchez, Director of E-Commerce at Spanair, stated that, "Spanair is laying the foundations for the implementation of a boarding card system in the near future that will be 100% paper-less; thereby ensuring greater passenger comfort and a substantial saving of time."

Gavitec Powers Mobile Ticketing For Spanair

Spanair and Vodafone Spain have joined forces with NeoMedia's Gavitec to save their customers time with a new mobile boarding card service.

At the beginning of November, Spanair launched its new mobile boarding card service, thus becoming the first airline to offer its passengers this type of mobile ticketing service. The Madrid-Bilbao route will deploy this service up to the end of the year, at which point the company will begin rolling out the mobile boarding card on all of its domestic routes.

Focusing primarily on business passengers, this innovative system facilitates receiving a Spanair boarding card via a multimedia message (MMS) sent to a mobile phone. The multimedia message contains an image with a two-dimensional barcode, which transmits all the information necessary to execute automated boarding, as well as a text information section with all travel details. Thus, to obtain their boarding cards, passengers will just need to proceed to the special check-in desks and pass the 2D code over a Gavitec EXIO scanner.

To obtain their mobile boarding card, passengers will be required to check-in using the web-based check-in service at spanair.com, or by connecting to the internet via their mobiles via the new mobile check-in service at spanair.mobi, which will be launched in tandem with the mobile boarding card service. At the end of the process, the passenger is asked for his or her mobile number, to which Spanair will send the corresponding multimedia message (MMS) free of charge.

In order to use this system, passengers simply need to pass the 2D code sent to their mobile phone over the scanners at Madrid and Bilbao airports. In doing so, they will obtain a paper receipt with which they will be able to pass through security and proceed to boarding.

Vodafone's director of innovation and business development, Pedro Fuertes, commented that, "The mobile boarding card and, in general terms, ticketing systems based on mobile handsets, are further evidence that mobile telephones, in addition to facilitating voice-based communication, are making life easier for us by allowing for secure access to endless services, at any time and from anywhere."

Spanair piloted this system in June during the Vodafone innovation show, which also served as the launch for this new service. Pablo Sánchez, Director of E-Commerce at Spanair, stated that, "With this advance, Spanair is laying the foundations for implementation of a boarding card system in the near future that will be 100% paper-less; thereby ensuring greater passenger comfort and a substantial saving of time."