Who knew that iBeacons and boating were so compatible?
We know that auto dealers and iBeacons and mobile wallet passes are great together (we actually said so on our last podcast episode) and we push use cases for a ton of different things that work well with iBeacons nearly every week.
But this article from BoatingIndustry.com caught our eye recently, so we thought we’d share the gist of it with you (and of course give you the chance to read the whole story if you like).
Tim Claxton, the author, states,
What gets me excited about this technology is the opportunity it provides boat businesses to provide pertinent information at the most essential time. This overcomes the current limitations of mobile notifications and QR codes by adding location awareness so you get information at the right time and right place without customers having to do anything at all.
And we totally agree! The idea that you might one day have an app (or an Apple Wallet) that pops up a notification on your mobile when you enter an unfamiliar marina and gives you links to GPS coordinates, maps, points of interest, etc is AWESOME.
Of course, we’d tie the whole thing together with geo-fencing notifications that began pushing out valuable information well before you got to the range that an iBeacon would come into play, and then we’d transition to the iBeacon as you moved into the “micro” range that they best serve.
These are simple things that could be done using only Apple Wallet or an Android wallet app; we’re sure that some enterprising app developer will sell a marina or ten on the idea of having their own app – and that’s probably not the worst idea – EXCEPT for the part where the user doesn’t have that app when they first approach the marina and therefore won’t be able to use it.
Every iPhone has Apple Wallet, and a large number of people have generic Android wallets installed already – these people could see immediate benefits just by having the wallet pass installed on their phone – and the marina reservation confirmation could include the link, or their marketing material could include both the link and the QR code.
Hmmm, maybe there’s a new podcast episode in the making here.