The iPad Kiosk: Landing at an Airport Near You

12.10.2012
Over the past two years, OTG Management, an operator of airport restaurants, has spent $10 million putting some 600 iPads in passenger waiting areas and on dining tables. This is just the beginning, too. The iPad project is taxiing for takeoff with 7,000 iPads to be deployed across four North American airports in the next 18 months.

"We're marrying a world-class dining program with the best of technology," says Albert Lee, CTO of OTG. "It's never been done in this capacity before."

OTG's iPad project is one of the biggest iPad deployments of its kind, where the iPad takes on a kiosk-like, public-facing role. Airline passengers can freely use an iPad to order food, surf the Web, check Facebook and play games. The iPad keeps track of their flights and alerts them to board, as well as changes in flight times and gates.

OTG's pioneering effort could lead to tablets being used in a new way-namely, the iPad kiosk.

"It's not like tablets and kiosks haven't been tried before, but the iPad was the first widely accepted consumer tablet that had a lot of buzz around it," Lee says. "Apple put in a very attractive package that allowed us to put our own custom applications on them."

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