As it stretches its wingspan in the digital sphere, Lufthansa has added new functionality which lets passengers query their Google Home device for updates on bookings.
Sebastian von Herff, manager digital innovation for the airline says that Google knows a passenger is flying with Lufthansa as soon as a boarding pass is emailed to their Gmail account.
"You can query the information via Google Home. This is done by an HTML mark-up in our boarding pass commands.
“It's actually an integration into the complete Google ecosystem; not only also Google Home, but also Android Wear, Google Now and the Google calendar."
The ease of integration has encouraged Lufthansa to become more closely entwined with Google, von Herff says.
"We didn't have to touch any of our back end systems. We only had to touch our boarding pass email, which is pretty far on the front-end side.
"We put in some HTML markups and XML markups, which basically tell Google that the person is flying with us, [with details like departure and destination] in a structured way that can be read by Google.
This is also the reason why it only works if you sent your boarding pass to a Gmail account. Other mail providers can't read these HTML and XML texts."
Adding Google Home search is less about addressing a pressing need and more about giving customers more ways to connect with the airline. It is a natural extension of Lufthansa’s mandate to lead on digital innovation.
"You don't have to use Google Home to be on time for your flight, but it's a convenience. It's a service that we believe is thought-through. It's really easy.
If you are in your living room just to query your Google Home: ‘Is my flight on time?’ It can tell you, ‘Don't worry your flight is on time, everything is OK.’ It's just one additional digital service that we are offering."
Others have picked up on this same convenience factor of Google Home, including Kayak which introduced voice-activated flight search in January of this year.
But von Herff says that Lufthansa is keeping other digital assistants in mind, for future developments.
"We are having a very close look at the market, also towards Alexa and Echo. The different strategy and approach which Amazon is taking is very interesting for us, but currently we have nothing to announce."
The work with Google Home is part of investment in the digital development from the carrier.
Lufthansa says it's investing €500 million in the development of personalised offers between now and 2020.
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