Vueling - Smartwatch Boarding Pass

Vueling - Smartwatch Boarding Pass

Airports and airport lounges are popular and high-profile testbed locations for companies to showcase their latest technological innovations, given the diverse and international mix of consumers and the industry’s high-profile in the media. Dubbed “product or service as marketing,” here the innovation is clearly designed for marketing purposes, with the objective to have bloggers and mass media talk about it, even if the actual adoption by passengers is 1 percent in the end.

This year, wearable tech devices are joining the digital revolution, with Virgin Atlantic’s six-week trial - featuring Google Glass and Sony SmartWatch 2 devices - in its Heathrow lounge creating a huge wave of publicity for the airline.

Meanwhile, Spanish LCC Vueling together with Sony has launched the world’s first airline smartwatch application that allows passengers to “carry both their boarding pass and flight information on their wrist,” as the companies put it.

Conceived for Sony’s SmartWatch 2 intelligent watch, the Android-based app allows passengers to display a 2D boarding card barcode on the watch’s display, as well as displaying details of upcoming flights – similar to the functionality offered in many airlines’ smartphone apps.

The Vueling app is one of around 300 apps in the Google Play store that are currently available for the Sony SmartWatch 2.