Lost baggage? How smart ‘finder’ tags could help the travel industry

Electronic tags can be fixed to any object so it can always be located, and this could come in handy for travel firms. Andrew Hennigan reports on some of the new technologies out there

Baggage handling is a major issue for airport users, says Airport 3.0: The Technology and Data Transforming Airport Operations, a new white paper from EyeforTravel, which points to a figure from an IATA report that over 25 million bags are lost each year.

In fact, the report continues, the Star Alliance recently said they would formally develop a common IT infrastructure for baggage checking and handling. According to Mark Schwab, CEO of Star Alliance, modern technology can help.

Numerous startups, including Tile, TrackR, Chipolo and Stilla, are pinning their hopes on electronic finder tags, the modern equivalent of the pinging key finder that responded when you whistled. Electronic finder tags work with a smart phone, are all coin sized, offer similar capabilities and are based on the same Bluetooth radio technology. Unlike more expensive GPS trackers they are not actually aware of their position, but they can respond to Bluetooth radio signals from a nearby smartphone or tablet.

These tags can be attached to whatever needs to be located, and if an item goes missing, providing it is roughly within the roughly 30-metre Bluetooth range, the tag will play a melody. At the same time the phone will display the approximate distance of the tag from the phone. Other functions include displaying the tag’s last location on a map, if the lost object is out of range.

The Stilla system claims to take tagging to a new level. “It’s not primarily a tracking device,” says founder and CEO Elin Elkehag, “it is a pocket-sized security system that guards your belongings and gives you an instant notification when something moves when it shouldn’t”.

The company says that they have been approached by numerous B2B customers in the industry like airlines and credit card companies that, in a bid to differentiate the experience, are interested in providing Stilla to their top tier passengers/members.

Although its too early to name names, Elkehag says airlines see it as a perfect product to have on your carry-on-bags while, for example, briefly walking away to check flight times on a terminal screen or grab a coffee.

Business travel use case

One of the most obvious business applications of the Stilla tag is to offer branded tags to frequent travellers but, says Elkehag, there are other commercial uses too. Some companies are thinking of using them to protect loading dock doors or unattended stock that has just been delivered, others to protect confidential documents.

Locator tag vendors generally offer their hardware for embedding in other products. “We partner with a travel/fashion brand called Calypso Crystal makers of the Calypso Tag, a smart, personalised travel companion,” says Chipolo co-founder and CPO Tadej Jevsevar. “It has a Chipolo finder built in so you are notified when your bag comes onto the carousel or if someone tries to steal it.”  

Calypso takes the utilitarian tag and repackages it inside a handcrafted, limited-edition leather exterior that disguises the presence of the electronic tag.

Smart cars

One area where locator tags are likely to prove most helpful for travel businesses is in tracking equipment inventory. By tagging essential equipment, or even people, staff can verify that everything is in the right place and locate anything that is missing much more quickly.

Finally, what all scatterbrained travellers have been waiting for, a smart car that lets the owner know if they have forgotten their bag, wallet, phone or laptop.

A taste of how this could work can be found in an early co-operation between Tile and Jaguar Land Rover.  Finally, what all scatterbrained travellers have been waiting for, a smart car that lets the owner know if they have forgotten their bag, wallet, phone or laptop. Owners of the new 2017 Land Rover Discovery Sport equipped with this system tag all the objects that they want to have with them. When they start the engine the entertainment & navigation system scans for all the objects in the must-have list and displays a message either confirming that everything is on board or alerting that something is missing, indicating also the last location where it was seen.

Marathon Tours, a company for travel & running across the world, has also partnered with Tile which some runners have used on a recent trip to Antartica. Although there is no Wifi on Antartica, that isn’t a problem. Because Tile uses Bluetooth technology, using a phones GPS to report map coordinates to a server cloud, it you are outside of a 3G or Wifi hotspot, Tile will still work. It will not, however, report GPS data to the cloud. 

Closer co-operation between the tag vendor and B2B customers is likely to lead to many more applications like this, where the benefits of the tag are multiplied by a closer integration with other systems.

Discussions between Stilla and partners to include its sensor into their products are underway, and will make use of the app’s functionality and machine learning algorithms. 

The risk of false alarm is a worry but Elkehage says algorithms will be able to recognise the difference between normal movements like the vibration on a train and unwanted movements like an attempted theft.

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