Overview
The SITA Beacon Registry is a registry of common use iBeacons for the Air Transport Industry (ATI).
The registry is a SITA initiative and provides the following services:
- It allows beacon owners (airlines, airports or 3rd parties) to view their beacon infrastructure and track where they are placed across multiple airports.
- It provides beacons owners with a simple mechanism to set the 'meta-data' associated with beacons.
- It provides a standardised API specification for app developers who want to use these beacons for developing travel and other related apps.
The aims of the registry are to promote the use of beacons in the Air Transport Industry and reduce the cost and complexity of deployment. This can be achieved with the following design goals:
- Promote shared beacon infrastructure to reduce cost and complexity of deployment.
- Introduce standard beacon types and data definition to encourage reuse.
- Provide a simple to use API to discover beacons and get meta-data about beacons.
- Be vendor agnostic - the service provides a standard interface which allows beacons from any vendor to be shared.
How it Works
Who is this service for?
Airports
Airports that are currently deploying beacons or are planning to deploy beacons can use the registry to store, track and make available information about the beacons to airport development teams and 3rd parties, such as airlines and ground handlers.
Airlines
Airlines will want to use beacons to improve passenger services, but will not, and realistically cannot, manage a deployment of beacons at all the airports they operate out of. Airlines can use the registry to leverage existing common use beacons deployed at airports.
App Developers
App developers can reuse an existing public beacon infrastructure to provide proximity information for passengers in airports.
Example uses for iBeacons at airports
This is a list of just some of the things you can do with iBeacons at airports. Remember - the iBeacons on their own do nothing. You need an app as starting point, but the real magic happens when you can contextualise location, intent through itinerary, determine next logical step with available operations data and visualise this on a map.
- Contextual Messages : upon arrival to beacon zone trigger an appropriate message based on other known information such as the itinerary data, passenger profile and flight data.
- Welcome to the airport, bagdrop for your flight is at Desk 50
- Welcome to the airport, the wait time at security is 20 minutes. Would you like to purchase fast track?
- Welcome home, your bags will be on carousel 7 in 18 minutes
- Welcome to the Lounge - the WiFi password is 'Hello!'
- Welcome to the airport, your flight does not depart for 3 hours. Would you like to purchase lounge access for $20?
- Your flight is on-time to depart at X.XX hours from such and such gate and terminal
- Beacon Assisted Kiosk Check-in : The passenger app detects that the passenger is standing immediately in front of a kiosk and either prompts the kiosk to pre-populate with passenger information for transaction completion, and/or offers mobile check-in
- Closing Gate Agency Tool : Enterprise app that automatically monitors and polls for passengers who have check-in but not yet arrived at gate to determine their location within airport. This aid will help agents determine if seat should be forfeited or other actions (e.g., paging) is best.
- Lounge Agent Assist : a network of beacons densely placed within a airline lounge guides agent to zone where passenger of interest can be addressed with a personal message.
- Airport Trains : beacons at stations trigger an app to display time to next train
- Airport Art or General Exhibits : beacons at airport exhibits trigger an app to display additional information about the subject from a CMS web service.
- Zonal context (includes where is my passenger) : If passenger is supposed to be in beacon zone X @ YY:YY am/pm and they are in another zone THEN trigger a message with instructions where they need to be.
- Walk times : connecting passenger deplanes at Gate X in Terminal X and whose connecting flight is at Gate Y in Terminal Y, surface current walk time to departing gate.
- Asset Tracking : place beacons on airport infrastructure and track its location within the building.
- Crowd Source Wait Times : use data from staff/passenger apps to crowd source wait/dwell times to further refine how to guide passengers (e.g. if Security A is very busy, prompt passenger to go to Security B).
