One year in to their partnership the streaming inflight entertainment solution flying on Vistara is getting an upgrade. Vistara World, powered by the Bluebox Wow portable IFE platform, no longer requires an app for passengers to view DRM-protected content. The change took effect on 1 September 2019 across the full fleet of 31 aircraft.
At Vistara we continue to invest in enhancing our service offerings to stay ahead of the curve. In the last year we have flown over 5 million customers who have consumed a variety of engaging content on ‘Vistara World’ and enjoyed the Vistara experience even more. The Bluebox platform’s convenience, robust capabilities and flexibility will now take this experience a notch higher.
– Mr. Sanjiv Kapoor, Chief Commercial Officer, Vistara
Vistara’s evolving content library includes a flight moving map, movies, TV shows and music across multiple genres. In addition, one of the most popular elements of Vistara World is the membership enrolment page for the Club Vistara loyalty program. That data is sync’d when the aircraft is on the ground between flights.
Frictionless fun
Removing the app requirement is a significant step in reducing friction between the entertainment system and passengers. Bluebox Business Development Director David Brown highlights the value of removing the app requirement, suggesting that it delivers “positive passenger experience and the ancillary revenue” improvements the carrier is seeking from the system.
The shift also highlights the competing pressures for airlines (and other companies) between the “stickiness” of an app for keeping passengers and the realities of operating in flight where an internet connection is either unavailable or an expensive customer acquisition expense. With an already captive audience on board forcing the app is less valuable. And for the passengers who don’t yet have it downloaded the experience of not getting to use the entertainment system can be incredibly frustrating, worse than not having any IFE at all.
Portable Value
The value of the portable, streaming IFE solution was also demonstrated for Vistara as it took on some of Jet Airways‘ former 737-800 aircraft in recent months. Because the system requires no installation or certification on board the airline was able to rapidly deliver that little bit of consistency for it passengers.
The app-free DRM content can be viewed on smartphones running iOS 11.2+ with Safari or Android v5+ with Chrome v75+. On laptops the content is supported in Chrome V69+ and Safari V11.
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