“The airport of the future is passenger-centric and intelligence-driven”

Vision-Box is a leading provider of Automated Border Control and electronic identity solutions. Its Marketing Director Pedro Torres outlined the company’s mission to provide optimal passenger experience, while enhancing security, to Marta Dimitrova.

Pedro Torres, Director of Product, Vision-Box: Happy Flow

Pedro Torres, Marketing Director, Vision-Box: “Happy Flow™ guarantees a seamless and secure identity management process and a stress free environment without long lines, definitely catering to a customers’ comfort, offering a much happier journey and a stunning, stylish experience for passengers.”

Could you please outline how Vision-Box provides seamless travel and enhanced security?

Pedro Torres, Marketing Director, Vision-Box: Since its inception in 2001, Vision-Box has been committed to becoming the world’s leading company supporting governments, border control authorities, airports, airlines and organisations to improve security, by offering them superior, tailor-made border control, identity management and surveillance solutions.
Here are some of the reasons that explain how Vision-Box solution provides a seamless experience for travellers and citizens while guaranteeing enhanced security:

  • By facilitating travel for legitimate travellers, providing them a seamless, time-saving travel experience.
  • By identifying people through reliable technology, either when requesting a document or crossing border controls, in turn enhancing global security levels.
  • By improving information management and exchange, which allows governments to better protect their communities, by identifying threats and anticipating risk.
  • By modernising identity management processes, implementing state-of-the-art solutions focused on more efficient, cost-effective processes for governments and easier, more convenient and gratifying services for citizens.

Could you please provide more detail about Vision-Box’s Happy FlowTM and in what ways it keeps the passengers ‘happy’?

Torres: Launched almost two years ago as the first biometric passenger identification clearance system, Happy FlowTM soon became the de facto standard for a passenger-centric, intelligence-driven airport structure, setting the grade for stakeholder collaboration, operational efficiency, security, and revenue enhancement.

For everything it represents, Happy FlowTM truly is a revolution in passenger identity management at the airport ecosystem. When a passenger checks in at a self-service kiosk or using a mobile phone, a photo is taken of their face, which is then verified against, and linked with their electronic passport. At the same time, all of the standard border control background checks are performed.

At each of the subsequent checkpoints – namely baggage drop, immigration and boarding – passengers simply look at a camera that automatically recognises their face, which is matched against their passport and boarding pass, granting approval to continue the journey.

For the passenger this is a major change as it makes the airport experience much quicker and hassle-free.

The engine driving Happy FlowTM is our recently launched integrated passenger journey management platform, OrchestraTM, where each stakeholder has their own view of all integrated airport processes.

For airlines, airport and government, Orchestra represents a major upgrade in the current processes, bringing improved operational efficiency, dramatic savings and happier and more loyal passengers.

How important is this stakeholder engagement to the Vision-Box philosophy?

Torres: Stakeholder engagement is the key to making seamless travel work. The air travel industry will only be able to cope with the current passenger experience needs and soaring passenger numbers, if stakeholders sit together and collaborate. There has been, however, a general lack of appropriate tools to collaborate at the passenger journey level. Our recently launched Orchestra platform is precisely that missing link.

With OrchestraTM, each stakeholder can define passenger workflows, and rely on a catalogue of published services by other key industry players, to write their own relevant business rules reacting in real time to bespoke triggers. Privacy by design is a key ingredient of the platform ensuring passenger and commercial privacy rules and legal aspects are fully observed. It’s a revolution in the way stakeholders can collaborate!

In what ways does the Vision-Box’s innovations enhance the passenger experience?

Torres: With more than 70 airports worldwide benefiting from Vision-Box automated processes, many passengers are rejoicing for not having to spend hours queuing and for facing much less uncomfortable identity checks.

In Aruba International Airport, the first airport to implement Happy Flow, happy families are realizing how fun and quick it is to cross the airport using self-service touchpoints.

The airport of the future will be a relaxing environment for shopping and dining where it just happens that you can also catch a plane. Airports will go from being a stressful place you need to go through when you fly, to a pleasant place you want to go to whether you are flying or not: a shopping mall with runways. In today’s world, such transformation will require airports to find an optimal compromise between passenger experience and security and at Vision-Box we are very happy to be making such a strong contribution to the digital airport revolution.


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