UK’s travel company Thomson has shared plans for its new initiative Thomson Labs, where the company will showcase new id

UK’s travel company Thomson has shared plans for its new initiative Thomson Labs, where the company will showcase new ideas to existing customers and give them the opportunity to help develop travel technology of the future.

Published: 15 May 2006

UK’s travel company Thomson has shared plans for its new initiative Thomson Labs, where the company will showcase new ideas to existing customers and give them the opportunity to help develop travel technology of the future.

Graham Donoghue, head of new media for Thomson, shared information about booking a holiday with fingertip, about biometric fingerprint scanning and fingertip being a unique identifier for the customer’s profile and bookings.

The technology, currently being rolled out on modern PCs, would enable a customer to scan his/her fingertip on their computer and store personal booking information that they can retrieve at a travel kiosk, at the airport check-in desk, or hotel - this makes it easier to provide a more integrated on and offline service to customers.

Among other developments, the company shared info on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) - a mobile phone, equipped with a bar code reader, would enable customers to scan bar codes on advertisements or holiday brochures; details of availability information can then be displayed on their mobile phone screen. A booking confirmation would have a unique barcode that the customer would scan to store it in the phone so that travel shops, hotels and airports would be able to instantly recognise the customer using an RFID reader -speeding up the check in and security processes.

Voice Search technology is currently being tested. The technology will enable people to speak their search request into their mobile device.

Graham said, “Voice search technology is functionality that will make mobile web surfing simpler and take the internet truly mobile. The technology particularly lends itself to travel, enabling people to research their destination whilst they are already on holiday, for example finding a highly rated restaurant and finding their way using mobile maps and satellite navigation on their telephone.”

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