FORT LEE, NJ and AUCKLAND, New Zealand – On November 3, Air New Zealand made significant changes to its domestic check-in processes including the first of several major terminal improvements around the country starting at its biggest domestic port of Auckland.
The changes include a new state-of-the-art check-in and boarding experience, introducing a new layout and design, new kiosks that enable customers to print their own bag tags, a direct to conveyor belt bag drop zone to eliminate queues, new gate scanners for straight to gate check-in and boarding for customers without bags, and several new technological enablers for frequent flyers.
In addition, Air New Zealand distributed approximately 100,000 customized OTI Smart Stickers to its most frequent domestic travelers to be attached to the back of their mobile phones, which will serve as a permanent and reusable boarding pass. Frequent flyers simply present their smart sticker-enabled mobile phone to specially equipped kiosks or gate scanners, and their information is immediately retrieved, making the boarding process paperless.
OTI’s smart sticker is an entirely self-contained, contactless payment device that adheres to multiple surfaces including mobile phones, PDAs, and more. The special configuration and adhesive on the back of the smart sticker makes it easy to attach to any surface, be it metallic, plastic, or other. This feature enables issuers to add contactless payment capabilities to existing mobile devices independent of the handset type and model. For the time being, the Air New Zealand program will not be utilizing the sticker’s payment capabilities. The OTI smart sticker serves to upgrade products already in circulation, providing a quick time-to-market, cost effective solution, which is expected to assist issuers in increasing market share.
Oded Bashan, chief executive officer and chairman of OTI said: “The smart sticker is one of the more exciting contactless products OTI has developed. By simply adding a contactless sticker to a mobile device, we provide the device with more capabilities and the issuer with more ways to communicate with their customers and add to their product offering. Air New Zealand took it a step further by offering a unique product to its customers and providing them with a superior user experience in the boarding process.”
