Social Seating – The Future of Air Travel
Back in March, I wrote about ‘The In-flight interview you didn’t expect’, which outlined the new services that KLM and Malaysia Airlines are bringing in to make your flights a little more social. Since then, I have been lucky enough to give a short interview to Eran Savir, the CEO of SeatID. The ‘Social Seating’ tool will be launched in September and is available to any airline that wants it. Being reported on CNN and Business Insider, SeatID is gathering momentum and worldwide interest.
The seating solution is a social engagement tool which will allow passengers to choose a seatmate based on their social networking profiles, such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. To book your flights, the customers can log into the site, search for their tickets and then can see who else is travelling.
I asked Eran, how this service differs from the existing solutions from KLM and Malaysia Airlines. He said, “KLM did not integrate social data for every decision on the users’ purchase process but added it only to the seatmap. Malaysia Airlines app is a Facebook app (running only on Facebook and not their website) and allowing passengers to see only their Facebook friends. The chances of having a Facebook friend on board are very low. SeatID shows friends, friend of friends and people with shared interest.”
As in the previous article, I questioned the security of these services, to which Mr. Savir replied “It depends on the privacy settings that you’ll define. Essentially we’re aiming at showing you friends, friends of friends and people with shared interest, hence these people can see you as well. As a user you have an option to define who will see you.”
SeatID isn’t the only company to be introducing this service, competing against Ticketmaster, Planely, Facebelt and Meet & Seat’, Eran Savir and his CTO David Rachamim are confident that they have a solution that will transform the way we travel. With some big brands following suit, it suggests that this is no fad.
What do you think about ‘Social Seating’? Let us know in the comments below or via Twitter @puregenie.
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