Thanks to its new partnership with the AirPortr digital platform and provider of smart baggage solutions, Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) can now offer its customers travelling from Geneva Airport the new "AirPortr" service, under which they can have their registered baggage picked up from their home or hotel and looked after all the way until they collect it from the carousel at their air destination. The new service is available via a dedicated link on swiss.com, and can be booked at any time provided the bags concerned are picked up no later than 23 hours before their flight’s departure.
The new AirPortr service is already available throughout much of the Lake Geneva region including Geneva, Nyon, Lausanne and Montreux, and should be duly expanded throughout Switzerland after evaluation of its present trial period. The price of the service per bag is based on the pick-up location, and currently ranges from CHF 39 for Geneva to CHF 59 for Lausanne, with substantial reductions from the second bag upwards. SWISS is the first airline to offer this service in Switzerland, but it should soon also be extended to SWISS’s sister airlines within the Lufthansa Group.
Multiple benefits
The prime benefit of the new AirPortr service is that the traveler can make their way to Geneva Airport unencumbered by the usual bags. On arrival there, with their registered baggage already taken care of, they can bypass the usual check-in and bag drop formalities and head straight to the security check. The result: time savings, and a more contact-free airport process. In addition, customers traveling to their departure airport unburdened by baggage are more likely to do so by public transport. This was recently confirmed by a study of existing AirPortr users, in which 66% of respondents reported opting for public transport as they no longer needed to carry their bags. Given SWISS’s declared commitment both to halving its carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and to intermodal solutions, this is a further key benefit of the new AirPortr option.
“Our customers tell us that getting themselves and their bags to the airport is one of the most challenging parts of their travels,” explains SWISS Chief Commercial Officer Tamur Goudarzi Pour. “So we’ve listened to them and, thanks to our new partnership with AirPortr, we can now offer them a new travel experience that begins before they leave home. Working together, we can show that traveling is easy, quick and transparent, however you choose to do so. Our new service is tangibly superior to the classic baggage transport options. And it also makes a substantial contribution to our sustainable-travel ambitions.”
“The Lufthansa Group with SWISS are showing the way to becoming the world’s most digitally advanced aviation group by using digital technologies to enhance the customer experience, make travel more connected and more ecofriendly and optimize ground operations,” adds Randel Darby, the CEO and founder of AirPortr. “Switzerland boasts a world-class public transport system in a country. This gives us an ideal environment in which to develop our collaboration with SWISS. This is also our first operation under the partnership with Swissport that we announced in September.”
Collected at home
AirPortr has teamed up with Swissport, the world’s premier provider of airport ground services, to collect the customer’s registered baggage from their home. Under Swissport’s responsibility, the baggage is picked up at the customer’s home after verification of their ID and boarding pass. The customer receives a digital baggage receipt to ensure traceability, and will be kept fully informed by email and text message of their baggage’s whereabouts at every step of the journey. The bags are also sealed at the customer’s home to ensure their secure delivery to the airport, where they will be subjected to the usual security checks. “With these intuitive and customer-minded solutions, the whole complex baggage handling process has been transformed into a service that is centered firmly on the traveler,” concludes Bruno Stefani, Swissport’s managing director Switzerland & France. “As a result, they can individually tailor these services to their specific wishes and needs.”
