Airlines use Wi-Fi to deliver in-flight pitches
Passengers do like to shop while flying, and better technology is key.
Rose Wang, a frequent traveler, is willing to concede that she misses the kitschy SkyMall catalog and its quirky roundup of gadgets, pet accessories and other oddities.
But Wang, who lives in the Washington area and is a consultant to government contractors, is less than enthusiastic about what she perceives as a creeping influx of retail pitches that she encounters while in flight.
“When you get on the entertainment console, there are more ads, and if you log onto the Wi-Fi, of course, there’s ads,” she said.
Airlines say they are simply giving passengers what they want: a chance to shop.
“They’re looking for other things to entertain themselves,” said Jamie Perry, vice president for brand and product development at JetBlue Airways.
It’s all made possible with the advent of Wi-Fi on planes. Short of a patient in a dentist’s chair, it’s hard to find a more captive audience than airline passengers.
When JetBlue added its Fly-Fi wireless network a little more than two years ago, Perry said the airline initially anticipated that travelers would mostly be interested in social networks during flights.
“It was a little bit of a sur- prise to us, early on, how much time people spent shopping,” he said.
Airlines are counting on nimbler technology and faster, more reliable Wi-Fi in the air to deliver virtual catalogs, promotions and a host of goods and services.
They are betting on getting a piece of what GuestLogix, a travel retailing technology company, says is a $5 billion annual business, either direct- ly or through affiliate programs.
“Where we’re starting to see this is in the airlines that have made the big investments in in-flight Wi-Fi,” said Michael Reyes, director of customer centricity at Sabre Airline Solutions.
“They’ve always been chasing ways to find new revenues,” he said. “The big difference now is the connectivity. They can have a lot more data piped up to the plane.”
The onboard retail market is growing at a 13 percent rate, year over year, according to Craig Proud, a senior vice president at GuestLogix.
“The technology is there,” he said. “Based on our experience, the market opportunity is still really huge, but merchandising is the key to success.”
In November, LSG Sky Chefs, an airline catering company and a division of Lufthansa Group, acquired one of its partners, the Irish technology company Retail inMotion, to help it expand into what it called the “increasingly important onboard retail business.”