Welcome to the #PaxEx Podcast, which tracks the evolution of the airline passenger experience and aviation’s sustainability initiatives.
We’re pleased to share our interview with Dimitrios Tsirangelos, who serves as VP of business development at international travel media network Spafax.
As airlines connect their aircraft in a bid to offer passengers an at-home experience in the sky, and as broadband is poised to transform seatback IFE — as aided by onboard edge caching — Spafax’s role as a major content service provider to airlines is evolving into that of an “experience” service provider.
During the APEX TECH conference in Los Angeles, Tsirangelos explained to RGN how Spafax navigates the jungle of licenses and distributors, as well as regulatory requirements such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), to support the intelligent delivery of increasingly personalized content and experiences to airlines and their passengers.
He also suggested that a “hyper-personalized” experience for passengers is not always necessary.
“What do [people] have in common when they are in the air, in the aircraft? They have one destination in common… So this is something that you can target,” noted the Spafax executive. “You don’t need this really personal data that is governed through GDPR or all the other legislation that you need. So, I think that the first step that we need to take is to target audiences in a more concise way, in a way that is relevant to the traveler at this point when he or she is in the cabin.”
He continued in reference to passenger privacy: “There is also a technological solution where the person is not identified by name and date of birth, but by an ID number. So this ID number is, let’s say, works like a DRM. It’s an encrypted number. If you don’t have the key to decrypt this number, you don’t know who that is. You are not sharing any sensible information. So technologically it is possible to do this personalization without disclosing data.”
Please enjoy our interview with Tsirangelos below.
Music license: Adventurous Life by L-Ray Music, PremiumBeat by Shutterstock
