Smart carts that take you to the best deals at the airport

Free smart carts with built-in location-finding and other services have arrived at the San Diego International airport. They are a new way for retailers and brands to direct travelers into their stores and buy products.

Carts could hold the key to lifting retail sales at financially hard-pressed airports around the country. A trial at San Diego International has shown that they have the power to drive travelers into stores and respond to promotions they might otherwise miss.

‘Intelligent’ or smart carts, were deployed as a pilot at the California gateway late last year as part of the airport’s Innovation Lab program, designed to hone novel concepts into real-world solutions to make life easier for passengers. One example is AtYourGate, the mobile ordering food and drink delivery service which, after its San Diego Airport rollout, secured seed funding of $2 million by Triton Funds and is now in nine North American airports

Powered by IndoorAtlas, Copenhagen-based Intelligent TrackSystems is now focusing on growing its business with its smart carts after the successful airport deployment.

Solution

Working closely with the IndoorAtlas, Intelligent TrackSystems integrated IndoorAtlas SDK into the company’s smart cart solution to enable its precise indoor positioning and navigation capabilities.

Our solution for Intelligent TrackSystems consists of:

• Indoor positioning service
• IndoorAtlas SDK integration
• Co-development services

As a result of our collaboration, 90% of respondents said the smart carts made their shopping and wayfinding experience easier, while almost all claimed they would use the smart carts again. Using interactive screens attached to the handle, a high 87% also utilized the carts’ mapping functions to take them to their gate on time, which is often one of the biggest worries for passengers, and about half of the users used the smart carts to find retail and food and beverage concessions.

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