- The first fully integrated digital mobility solution for baggage goes into production
- Inter-sectoral innovation by RIMOWA, Airbus and T-Systems
- Exclusive product launch in association with Lufthansa
At the Future Travel Experience Global show in Las Vegas, RIMOWA will be presenting the world's first ever fully integrated digital mobility solution for travel baggage. The RIMOWA Electronic Tag will replace the usual paper label for baggage data with a data module including a display integrated into the travel case.
In addition to their digital boarding card, passengers will in the future also receive digital baggage data from their airline for the flight that they have booked. This information is sent from their smartphone via Bluetooth to their travel case fitted with the RIMOWA Electronic Tag and shown on the display integrated into the case. This allows the traveler to check in from anywhere in comfort and to drop his or her luggage in seconds at any airport equipped with semi for fully automatic bag drop stations anywhere in the world. Airlines and collection services are already working on solutions that will soon be capable of collecting luggage fitted with the RIMOWA Electronic Tag at the press of a button from your home.
With start of production the RIMOWA Electronic Tag is set to take place in time for the beginning in 2016 through RIMOWA's German stores with the exclusive participation of LUFTHANSA. The product will then be launched internationally in April 2016. The network of airline partners set to offer their passengers the Electronic Tag will be expanded continuously going forward.
The new baggage mobility solution is a development on the BAG2GO innovation project initiated by Airbus in 2012. For this project Airbus identified the complicated and time-consuming baggage drop process as a major problem, leading to more passengers carrying on large amounts of hand baggage, seriously impeding the boarding and deboarding processes. Using an innovative inter-sectoral approach, Airbus tested the technical potential of the idea in collaboration with T-Systems, their principal strategic supplier of ICT (information and communication technology) services, and baggage manufacturer RIMOWA. The study that emerged from this process, "BAG2GO," resulted in RIMOWA founding a new affiliate of the same name. BAG2GO GmbH chose T-Systems as its advisor, system developer and provider of cloud-based solutions and mobile applications and, together with worldwide market leaders E INK and Netronix, developed the "RIMOWA Electronic Tag."
About Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world's leading integrated telecommunications companies with around 151 million mobile customers, 30 million fixed-network lines and more than 17 million broadband lines (as of December 31, 2014). The Group provides fixed-network, mobile communications, Internet and IPTV products and services for consumers, and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in more than 50 countries and has approximately 228,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of 62.7 billion euros in the 2014 financial year – more than 60 percent of it outside Germany.
About T-Systems
Deutsche Telekom considers the European business customer segment a strategic growth area. It offers small, medium-sized and multinational companies ICT solutions for an increasingly complex digital world. In addition to services from the cloud, its range of offerings centers around M2M, security solutions, complementary mobile communications and fixed-network products, and solutions for virtual collaboration and IT platforms, all of which form the basis for our customers' digital business models.
The corporate customers unit (T-Systems) and its 47,800 employees around the world generated revenue of around 8.6 billion euros in the 2014 financial year.
About RIMOWA:
RIMOWA, one of the world's leading premium brands for baggage cases in aluminum and high-tech polycarbonate materials, is one of the few producers of travel baggage still manufacturing in Germany. It is possibly also the only manufacturer with more than 110 years of history behind it and a strong commitment to tradition – an exceptional trait in the industry. For Rimowa “Made in Germany” and “German engineering” mean combining excellent materials, brilliant technology and extraordinary design with the very highest quality of workmanship. For decades now, the identifying feature of the collections, which are continually optimized, has been the unmistakable elegance of the grooves pressed into the case shells. The tradition-rich company is based in Cologne, and sells its products in more than 65 countries all over the world through selected dealers as well as its own outlets and flagship stores in a continuously expanding network.
About Airbus
Airbus is the world's leading builder of aircraft, offering the most modern and most wide-ranging family of airliners on the market. Airbus aircraft cover the entire range of passenger capacities, from 100 to well over 500. At the vanguard of innovative technologies, Airbus aircraft are among the most economical and quietest jet planes in the world. Airbus has sold more than 12,800 aircraft to more than 350 customers and has already delivered just under 7,900 finished airliners. A worldwide business, Airbus has construction and production facilities in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain, and is represented by its affiliates in the USA, China, Japan and the Middle East. Airbus is an EADS company with its head office in Toulouse.