KLM-Care Tag

KLM - CARE TAG

Wearable tech is big business, with the size of the market expected to double by 2021. According to IDC, 125.5 million wearable devices will be shipped this year (up from 104.3 million in 2016) and the total will hit 240.1 million in 2021.

As a result, it’s not surprising that airlines have been looking at how they can take advantage of the wearable tech revolution. Last year, easyJet created a prototype of ‘sneakairs’, which were GPS enabled trainers that guided you around Barcelona.

At the time, easyJet said the shoes would ‘one day’ be available to buy on board, but it seems that easyJet rolled these out more as a PR-stunt rather than an actual product initiative.

The latest airline to get into the wearables is KLM, and its innovation looks both more promising and realistic.

The “Care Tag” is a smart luggage tag that you put on your rucksack or handbag when walking around Amsterdam.

It is a smart audio luggage tag that automatically provides visitors with location based verbal tips on how to traverse the city. The specially designed location-aware audio luggage tag consists of an offline GPS module and a speaker.

Naturally the voices on the KLM Care Tag that guide you around are those of KLM cabin crew, who recorded 300 insider tips. A limited number of the tags were released in September in English, but there are currently plans to produce tags that talk to tourists in Chinese, Portuguese, German and Russian. Indeed, there are pages in each language up now highlighting the fact that these will be available in 2018.

The design studio which created the KLM Care Tag, Frolic, also designed the KLM Night Light, which we covered in an earlier report. This is a light that business travellers can give to their kids, allowing them to count the number of nights that the Mom or Dad will be away.

Finally, like easyJet, KLM has also market produced its own pair of sneakers. However, though these were limited edition Amsterdam-themed trainers for the Nordic market, they were not ‘smart’ shoes.

KEY TAKE-AWAY

If producing a piece of wearable tech, four questions are worth asking.

First of all, is this just a gimmick to get some PR? Secondly, is it useful and does it add value? Thirdly, does it support the overall brand in some way? And finally, can it be scaled up?

The answer to all four questions here is yes. The KLM Care Tag is a real thing and not just a stunt. You can see how all the GPS-guided insider tips are useful, and you can imagine how people would want this tag on their handbag or rucksack.

The fact that KLM crew recorded the voice-overs immediately adds a brand element. And it can indeed be scaled up - for example in different languages as KLM is doing now, or it could in theory be rolled out to other cities beyond Amsterdam.