Athens International Airport (AIA) has become the first airport worldwide to implement a bot app through Facebook Messenger. This builds on the location’s other successes with social media, having already launched ATH Messenger, available through Facebook and Twitter, which provides users with flight information and updates.
The ATH Messenger bot builds on this capability, with customers now able to communicate with the service directly via Facebook Messenger, receiving special offers, timetables, airport parking information and more by typing in a flight number or specific request, or by clicking on the relevant subject heading. Users can initiate the service by searching @ATHMessenger on Facebook or visiting the website’s ATHMessenger page.
George Demetriades, AIA’s director of information systems and telecommunications business unit, said, “The bots are programs that perform a specific task in an automated manner where human intervention is not necessary. It is an application that will revolutionize the way we use our smartphones because the more it evolves, the more it reduces the use of many different applications, as with a single command we will be able to perform everything we want via Facebook Messenger.”