Global Eagle Entertainment Inc. (NASDAQ:ENT) (GEE) is unveiling its new Airtime Portal for cruise ships at Seatrade Cruise Global 2017 in Florida this week. This new service keeps passengers busy enjoying Wi-Fi, instant messaging, social media, live TV, movies, games, news and more directly to passengers’ own mobile devices anywhere on the ship.
The Airtime Portal is derived from Global Eagle’s proven platform which has been deployed on hundreds of commercial airlines. The company will transition its existing cruise ship portals to the new technology over the next 12 months in a way that minimizes disruption for ship operators.
When coupled with Global Eagle’s patented SpeedNet™ web browsing technology, the new portal will give passengers a high-speed Wi-Fi experience similar to what they get on shore. With Global Eagle’s selection of fully licensed award-winning movies, destination guides, port information, scheduled activities, special promotions, ship tracking, near-real-time news and sports clips and televised events. Content is available in multiple languages and can be tailored to passenger demographics. The Airtime web user interface provides an electronic program guide that mimics an in-home entertainment center allowing passengers to see what is up next on live TV through the convenience of their own device. It is fully customizable to maximize brand engagement and create special promotions.
Global Eagle’s Airview reporting dashboard is a suite of data-rich back-office tools to monitor and analyze portal performance. Payments, performance data and logs are offloaded, and fresh content is uploaded, via a Wi-Fi connection when the ship is in port.
The flexible Airtime Portal also provides a host of opportunities for cruise operators to generate incremental revenue by monetizing passenger interactions with engaging content, enabling real-time transactions with built-in security and digital ads and sponsorships. It enables payments to be made to credit and debit cards or to the folio. It also integrates with the company’s loyalty programs to deliver customized pricing depending on the passenger’s loyalty status.
Ole Kristian Sivertsen, president of Global Eagle’s cruise, ferry and yacht services commented that with the launch of the Airtime Portal, they can now offer their customers a fully integrated package of connectivity services, live TV programming and content browsing, all merged together with a highly flexible front-end that supports the optimal onboard guest experience aligned with the cruise line’s profitability. https://geemedia.com
