PLAY trials Bluebox onboard retail
Blueview digital passenger experience platform
PLAY Airlines is to trial Bluebox’s Blueview onboard retail service via a Bluebox Wow portable streaming system in its battery-operated format.
Bluebox will integrate Blueview with MOST’s retailing and payment platforms to present PLAY’s retail offering wirelessly to passengers on their own devices, enabling touch-free ordering of food & beverages. Upon successful completion of the retail trial, a full deployment would add additional services to the Blueview platform, including paid access to in-flight entertainment.
“At PLAY we are committed to providing safe effortless travel and great value to our passengers, but in line with our ethos – and our name – we also want to provide passengers a happy and pleasant journey, and so chose Bluebox to help introduce the potential to ‘play’ through a digital services platform,” said PLAY’s Birgir Jónsson, CEO in a July 12 press statement. “Though we’re trialling retail initially, Blueview’s impressive flexibility as a broader digital platform would give us plenty of scope to expand the portfolio of digital services we offer on board in future. Bluebox’s credibility in this sector and their willingness to deploy a solution that will evolve with us demonstrate they are the right partner to have on our side in this exciting and very challenging environment in which we’re growing PLAY.”
“Our Blueview solution — with its capacity to increase retail sales on board and the flexibility of adding additional ancillary revenue-generating services including paid access to IFE content — epitomizes the value of a digital passenger experience to airlines, especially low-cost carriers such as PLAY,” added Kevin Clark, CEO, Bluebox. “We’re working closely with PLAY’s team to trial onboard retail to start, and following a successful trial, we will introduce new elements in future phases – from retail initially to retail plus other digital services; and from a battery-powered deployment on Bluebox Wow to an aircraft-powered solution. This kind of flexibility – both as partners and in the technology options we can offer – is crucial for airlines seeking new channels of revenue and additional value for their customers in the digital world in which we operate.”
Blueview is a software platform that provides both the browser-based portal through which passengers can view and access a range of digital services on board, such as onboard retail and in-flight entertainment, as well as all the underlying functionality which ensures secure payment processing, delivery of content, third-party app integration, content management and analytics.
Bluebox Wow is a cost-effective hardware platform that allows for rapid deployment of Blueview and provides the wireless network to deliver Blueview to passenger devices in any aircraft cabin. With a remarkably low cost of ownership, Bluebox Wow is a discrete, portable, lunchbox-sized unit stowed securely in overhead bins, and available in battery- or aircraft-powered options.
