Global travel media agency Spafax has long served the inflight entertainment content needs of airlines by leveraging innovative technology, data analysis, and content curation. Underscoring its deep commitment to the market, the London-headquartered firm in 2014 established a state-of-the-art IFE technical hub in the heart of Hollywood to expedite delivery of IFE from major studios to airlines.
Servicing the inflight realm in this fashion as a trusted content service provider (CSP) remains an important part of Spafax’s business. And in the last decade alone, The Hub has offered streamlined and secure content management for over 1,000 global content providers and airlines, including Air Canada, British Airways, Emirates, JetBlue, Lufthansa Group, Singapore Airlines, Qatar Airways and many others.
Spafax’s CSP work for airlines has also proven foundational, enabling it to springboard from a place of strength to address every touchpoint of the passenger experience, not just in-flight but also the pre- and post-flight realms, as evidenced by its new Connected Content Stream (CCS) solution, which was first developed for Lufthansa Group and named a 2024 finalist in the prestigious Crystal Cabin Awards.
CCS is billed as enriching the passenger travel journey “by seamlessly delivering tailored, highly relevant content” that engages passengers at every step of their trip — from at-home viewing to lounge streaming to up-to-the-minute sports updates onboard aircraft via a Live Ticker application.
During the APEX Global Expo in Long Beach, RGN sat down with Spafax VP business development and innovation Dimitrios Tsirangelos to learn about the geneses of CCS, and how it allows a passenger to stay connected to the airline’s ecosystem for the duration of their journey, whilst addressing airlines’ bandwidth pain points.
A kiteline of connectivity is all that’s needed to support this live sports ticker application. Image: Spafax
“It started a long time ago when we provided to Lufthansa an IFE microsite, which was a simple website showcasing the onboard content so passengers could go in and discover what is onboard. This is how it started,” Tsirangelos explained.
“But then we had different products that we were thinking about — personalization, recommendation engines, some streaming services, some live content. And every product that we created, we managed to connect to this main platform, called Profile, which then became more than a website. It’s a platform now.
“And with Lufthansa … then they came to us and said, ‘okay, we want live content.’ But we found out that there was some limitation in the [inflight] connectivity solution and bandwidth was not enough. So, because they wanted to cover the European Soccer Championships, we went back and said, ‘we have another solution which is low-bandwidth, live and this is how the Live Ticker was created.”
An advanced API integration with sports data provider Sportmonks enables Live Ticker to fetch live sports scores every 30 to 60 seconds. Meanwhile, its low bandwidth consumption addresses airline concerns over the high data costs associated with live streaming.
“And then we talked about how to extend the content experience. And we created another solution, the Lounge Streaming solution where we then had to create an Over-the-top Content Delivery Network (OTT CDN), a terrestrial infrastructure for streaming content. And this was connected also to [Lufthansa’s] Profile,” continued the Spafax executive.
With geolocation, with APIs, with IP whitelisting, we geofence and we secure this content because this is what the studios expect us to do and we make sure that the delivery is safe inside the lounge. So that means we have to go to every studio, ask for a permission, provide a White Paper for approval as every IFE supplier is doing. And we are getting now more and more approvals from the studios to be able to stream content in a lounge.
Spafax is among the CSPs helping airlines to extend and deepen their relationship with each passenger. But that relationship can become even more personal.
“Imagine I have the chance to create a playlist at home that I can carry with me,” urged the Spafax executive.
“And suddenly the IFE system knows that I have created a playlist. And when I’m onboard the aircraft, I don’t need to search anymore. It’s already there, my playlist. So, if you take all this and then integrate the layer of personalization — a connection with the PNR [passenger name record] system of the airline — this makes all this engagement even more personalized.”
Consequently, if an airline wants to add an advertising element to the experience to drive sales or maximize the value of their content licensing investments, “we know then what passengers like to see and the advertising will be relevant,” Tsirangelos said, noting that CCS boosts both loyalty and NPS scores.
Notably, Spafax is now mulling how to go further for its airline customers, using its technology to meet passengers at other touchpoints, perhaps for richer experiences at the destination.
In addition to creating OTT CDNs for its airline customers, he says, Spafax is asking: “why not extend it more?
“And we see also some activities in the industry where passengers can continue watching content after they’ve landed, you know, with sync. We as Spafax have the capability to do so because we have our creative services where we can create content that is not only to be seen in a cabin. We can extend the license out of the cabin if it’s our own content or if we have content providers that give us, not only inflight rights, but worldwide rights for everything.”
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