Intermodal travel: safe and seamless door to door journeys

Whatever the form of travel, there’s a need for safe and seamless automated journeys, smarter and more efficient borders, better on-time performance, and greater capacity. Across the travel industry we must tackle these issues together through common and shared approaches—be that for air travel, railways, cruises, or events.

SITA has developed solutions for the air transport industry where passengers can use their mobile phone to manage every step of their journey, including facial recognitionat each touchpoint. For example,our SITA Flex cloud platformenablespassengers to use their mobile anywhere in the airport without having to visit a fixed check-in desk or kiosk. It uses APIs and the cloud to extract and manage journey data, giving passengers a mobile self-service and automated journey whether in or outside the airport. Combined with SITA’s Smart Path, our biometric self-service solution,passengers can be identified at each step using their face as identification.

Railway stations also have common requirements to airports in the way they manage their stations. They need to improve passenger flow with better signage, manage disruption by providing timely information, communicate with travelers in multiple languages, and integrate operational and passenger data. Again, they can leverage our expertise and solutions we have developed for airlines and airports.

A move to more intermodal travel with rail to flight across Europe

Today, travelers want an interconnected and joined up travel experience – whether traveling by road, air, or rail — and, as with every other aspect of our lives, managed through their mobile. From the moment they walk out of the door to take a train to the airport, they want each step of the journey to fit neatly with the next.Intermodal travel solutions are not new, but up until now, they haven’t been integrated. While today, you can buy aticket that combines both air and rail, often the journey is not seamless. Here’s where we can help.

At SITA, we have the experience of bringing multiple stakeholders together through a single platform and helping adopt digital ways of simplifying experiences and operations. If you look at a single flight from say, Paris to Geneva, there are up to 10 stakeholders – including the airline, airports, border agency and groundhandlers — that need to work together to support that flight. Our solutions enable that. As we move to an intermodal ecosystem of 100+ active contributors to deliver the connected journey, we are able to support the unified digital systems that simplify the journey. And the journey doesn’t stop upon arrival. It takes you right up to the doorstep of global events and tourist experiences.We add value in servicing these intermodal offers, where capturing data and translating the data models from one industry to another in a consistent manner is key.

Simplifying data exchange and improving safety and traveler experience is in the interest of all stakeholders. I’m excited to see what the future holds.

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About the author

Benoit Verbaere is Director of Business Development. Travel + Transportation at SITA. This includes taking care of Railways, Maritime, Events, Shipping & Logistics markets, worldwide.
Benoit has a significant experience in IT and Travel Industries. He has worked internationally across 3 continents, and in various positions ranging from Innovation, Product Management, Head of Platform Engineering, and recently as Business Development Director for the European geography.
Benoit brings a mix of technical hands-on approach and experience growing the business, building value propositions and building solutions for customers.
Benoit is an Engineer in Computer Science and Mobile tech, as well as a trained Product Manager.