PawsGlobal hopes to reduce the stress of travelling with pets.
Written for the Airline Passenger Experience Association – APEX Experience magazine – Issue 7.5
From a specialty glass manufacturer to an orchestra, APEX welcomes more companies from different sectors into its fold. Here are some of the newest members to join the association.
Berlin Phil Media
From Bach to Mozart to Vivaldi, the world-renowned Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall has more than 1,200 works of classical music. This exclusive archive includes performances from the most eminent conductors and soloists, as well as documentaries and interviews about classical music.
“We are the performing artist, and we film every concert program we perform,” Robert Zimmermann, managing director of Berlin Phil Media, says.
“Our new technology partnership with Panasonic Corporation enables us to film the concerts in 4K/HDR and record in multitrack audio. We are thrilled about it and hope that our exclusive archive as well as our live broadcasts will find their way into the airplane cabin!”
Millimages
If there’s one constant in content, it’s that children will always watch animated programs. Paris-based Millimages has produced more than 600 hours of kid-friendly animated shows over the past two decades.
With series and feature films in its catalog, Millimages provides in-flight content to about 30 airlines and in 10 different languages, according to Lise Cosentino, the company’s sales manager. “Our latest best-seller, Molang, is a non-dialogue preschool show that targets passengers of all nationalities,” Cosentino says. The series is carried worldwide, in more than 250 countries, and on a varied and eclectic group of airlines – Emirates, Air Italy, EVA Air, Air France, Royal Brunei Airlines, South African Airways and Hawaiian Airlines have the series available for their youngest passengers.
Blue Ant Media
Toronto-based Blue Ant Media has been producing content for more than 10 years, with a diverse catalog of over 3,000 hours of award-winning programming.
Blue Ant owns, produces and controls content on a global scale, taking responsibility of the sale, licensing and broadcast of its content on worldwide video channels.
Now available on the in-flight entertainment (IFE) systems of over 20 airlines, Blue Ant’s content includes lifestyle, reality and documentary programming.
“From never-before-seen animal behavior to stories of the paranormal, our catalog brings an entertaining, informative and fresh approach to the passenger experience,” Solange Attwood, senior vice-president, Blue Ant International, says. And Attwood expects Blue Ant’s reach will only continue to expand. “The variety of high-quality programming available for in-flight viewing is growing, and we can only suspect that the range of content will increase in this market.”
Wessco International
Wessco International has been linking the travel industry with top lifestyle brands for 38 years by providing amenities and well-being solutions to premium passengers. “We focus on what we refer to as the ‘Total Passenger Experience,’ which includes the passenger experience before, during and after the flight,” Petros Sakkis, Wessco’s vice president of International Operations, says. “The aim is to create seamless, comfortable and memorable journeys.”
With products from skin-care and cosmetic companies, including L’Occitane, Korres and Dermalogica, and designers such as Eames, Michael Graves and Swarovski, Wessco produces unique brand extensions for airlines, with amenity bags, sleep suits and collectible items that passengers will want to keep as a memento of their journey.
“We foresee passengers increasingly expressing their own preferences in amenities and accompanying well-being services. We can expect airlines to invest in more innovative Total Passenger Experience campaigns through better-targeted, more meaningful brand collaborations,” Sakkis says.
PawsGlobal
The travel process is stressful enough for many flyers – but just imagine how the stress level can jump when traveling with pets. More and more of our four-legged friends are joining us on airline journeys, and PawsGlobal is looking to make the process streamlined, consistent and stress-free.
“Our solution includes animal travel eligibility that maximizes passenger compliance with the Department of Transportation regulations,” Marcia E. Alden, the company’s founder and CEO, explains. “The entire pet owner experience is driven through self-service that is highly personalized with information delivered in contextual settings tailored to the trip.” And that includes a pet boarding pass that “creates a ‘handshake’ between the pet owner and the airline that drives revenue,” Alden adds.
Guestlogix
“There is a direct correlation between airline profits and passenger experience,” Mike Abramsky, CEO of Guestlogix, says. “Airlines have razor-thin margins and ancillary revenue is needed more than ever, but it’s not just about adding a new brand of peanuts or offering two types of soda.”
According to Abramsky, only 7.5 percent of passengers purchase products in flight. Guestlogix’s intuitive software package aims to increase that revenue stream by making it easy for passengers to shop and pay, and easy for airlines to analyze customer data, thereby improving the passenger experience.
“Psychology studies have shown that giving people even the appearance of control reduces stress,” Abramsky explains. “Guestlogix has applied this insight to ancillary revenue. As airlines get to know their customers better and offer more relevant and personalized ancillary products, customers will in turn feel more in control of their experience and actively take advantage of opportunities to buy more and enjoy air travel.”
Schott
For more than 130 years, Schott has brought its broad technical expertise to the areas of specialty glass and glass-ceramics. Owned by the Carl Zeiss Foundation, Schott is headquartered in Mainz, Germany, with locations worldwide.
“Providing the best possible light to set the stage in aircraft cabins is both science and art,” Armin Plichta, global director of Sales and Marketing for Schott’s aviation business, says. “We’ve cultivated both disciplines for decades and know how to transport light with diodes and the fi nest glass fibers for the sake of passenger comfort and safety. We aim to enable the perfect lighting for the perfect atmosphere in aircraft cabins.” Approaching lighting solutions from an optical company’s background enables Schott to think differently, adopting a holistic, nose-to-tail strategy. And Plichta believes that the interior lighting journey has just started. “With the shift from fluorescent tubes to LED lighting systems, there are more possibilities and options to use lighting for airline branding and for a distinct passenger experience.”
Snap Audio
You’ve settled in for a 15-hour flight, browsed the IFE library and figured out what you’re going to binge watch. When you hit the play button, there’s video, but the sound in your headphones is terrible – the audio jack has failed! Snap Audio, a New Zealand startup, has spent five years conducting research, product development, prototyping and tests to bring a reliable audio connection to every passenger.
“We focused on one [pain point] for the passenger, the airline and our environment. Plugging in low-cost headsets into costly audio plugs/sockets and damaging them so easily is wrong,” Patrick Watson, CEO of Snap Audio, says. “We aimed our attention on swapping the strengths around and giving the audio plug/socket the strength it needed to last nearly as long as the aircraft does or at least the IFE system.”
The Snap Audio connector improves on the traditional 3.5-mm stereo jack with a low-profile ergonomic design, improved connectivity, superior reliability and “cost savings for the airlines that replace 30 to 100 percent of their audio plugs/sockets,” Watson says.