BAGTAG Adds Airport Kiosk Integration with Amadeus

For digital bag tagging company, BAGTAG the past decade has seen more than a few challenges. Throughout the process, however, the company remained nimble. It adapted as challenges arose. Its latest partnership with Amadeus integrates BAGTAG programming into common use, biometric-enabled bag drop kiosks in an airport terminal.

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Passengers place their bag on the belt just like normal. Rather than spitting out a paper tag, however, the system will detect the BAGTAG digital tag an update its display instead.

This closes one of the last remaining gaps in the BAGTAG portfolio.

BAGTAG Managing Director Jasper Quak sat with PaxEx.Aero on the sidelines of APEX EXPO/Future Travel Experience 2025 recently to discuss the company’s evolution over the past decade. Early on the digital tags were static, albeit digital. There was arguably some value there for airlines and consumers, but not much. With this deal the BAGTAG ecosystem expands significantly. It is also what Quak describes as the “first proof point” of the company’s latest transition, “from a static tag to a connected bag.”

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Realtime Tracking and Updates

Part of that is facilitated by a recent IATA policy update, allowing the tags to carry a small battery inside. That’s allows for significantly more processing to happen as bags move through the network, with improved tracking and updating as a result.

With well-placed beacons around the baggage handling system the airline can dynamically update digital tags as passengers change flights. One airline employee PaxEx.Aero spoke with about this suggested that a range of touchpoints (tugs/carts, belt loaders, etc.) could be configured relatively inexpensively to help ensure that bags no longer miss flights when a traveler misconnects.

And that’s an investment worth making. Getting that bag to the traveler after a miss is a costly endeavor for airlines.

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Intermodal Improvements

Quak also envisions a scenario where a collection of bags can be updated en masse, and without passenger intervention. Passengers connecting between an airport and a cruise ship, for example, could have their bags marked with the airline details while at the airport. Put the bags in a transport to the cruise port, however, and they can be updated to reflect the ship and cabin number. Ditto on the reverse.

It is even possible that the bags could be coded for the cruise transfer as they arrive at the airport, shunted to a dedicated baggage handling area rather than the regular claim belt. A passenger could check their bag at the airport in the morning and not touch it again until they arrive in their room on board the ship that evening. Rather than (or in addition to) being a cost savings measure, this sort of offering could be a premium paid service for travelers. There are some security/inspection issues to be worked through. But the technology is viable now.

Beyond the Hardware

Ultimately, however, Quak wants to operate the data layer that makes baggage tracking, handling, and processing a smoother process. “I see us currently as a platform or ecosystem,” he explains. “My goal is to make the electronic bag tag concept big, and the only way for that to work is by making everything interoperable.” The company started out making hardware, and it still does that today. But Quak sees the future as managing the ecosystem of digital bag tags, ensuring compatibility and interoperability between airlines across the globe.

Getting more partners on board in each type of use case is a big step in that direction.

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Our full conversation (slightly cleaned up for clarity) from APEX EXPO/Future Travel Experience 2025 is below.

PaxEx.Aero

For years, we have talked about digital bag tags, and every single time I say it’s cool, technology, barriers to entry, friction, costs, all of those things, I still don’t believe it’s gonna ever take off.

You’re still in business, so you’re right and I’m wrong. But especially this week’s news with Amadeus. Talk to me a little bit about what that means, from the sort of pain point friction of getting it to happen, and the logistics of how it works in terms of programming them and whatnot to make a – I don’t say frictionless experience, because there are still steps involved – but we’re definitely moving in the right direction

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG) 

For a project, a concept, like this to take off, there has to be many things aligned.

First of all, we need to find our way within the airline that we’d like to do business with. That means lining up seven or eight departments that all want to do this thing. That’s already bit of friction that we had to overcome. Then you have to be able to convince a passenger, which honestly is the most difficult thing to do; it costs is money.

We also saw the airlines that were early adopters of the technology, they were taking a bit of a wait and see approach, which is understandable. But if everyone takes a wait and see approach, nothing’s happening. And the passenger never gets to the usability, to the benefits.

Passenger usability has also been a challenge. Back a couple years ago it wasn’t that great. We had five airlines the first time we spoke, maybe, maybe even three airlines, the first time you and I met, connected into the solution. But most people fly more than two different airlines, and they want to use it on a global scale. Also, in our earlier rollouts, we didn’t spend that much time on change management with the airlines that we worked with. So people would buy it show up at the desk and the check-in agent say, I don’t know this, go away or you’re not bringing this on board of my flight.

All of those things combined led us to where we learned to take a an ecosystem approach. Now we make sure that whatever we do is 100% interoperable. That has led to a situation where, currently, we have 20 airlines integrated. And for instance, take two airlines, of them, KLM and Qatar. They don’t have a partnership, right? But if you receive an electronic bag tag from Qatar, you can also use it with KLM and vice versa. So that’s creating network effects, which means that usability is going up.

We’ve also improved a lot on the change management side. We do not launch a project anymore if we’re not completely convinced that we and the airline together have done everything to properly inform the network. And what we’re now starting to see with more airlines coming on board, with passenger adoption growing, with sales especially going well in the US, we see airlines starting to believe more in the concept. They don’t see it as an innovation project per se, but they see it as a customer experience and operational efficiency improvement project.

All of that leads to the Amadeus integration we’re so excited about. Very soon, we’ll be launching dedicated electronic bag tag desks at certain airports. This closes the loop in the ecosystem, because previously we didn’t have the airports on board yet. With what we’ve done with Amadeus, we’re now able to integrate on an airport level.

The bag drop that we just launched is the first example, the first step of that where we’ve been able to integrate on such level. Passengers with the digital bag tag simply put their suitcase in the machine, it will detect the electronic bag tag being there and then update it with your upcoming flight information.

PaxEx.Aero

So this is common use check in? I go in, I tap on the screen, pick my airline/reservation. Put my bag on the weight on the scale, it does the scan thing, and it says, “Okay, it’s not overweight. It’s not oversized. Fine. You get away with only 50 euros, instead of 150. Let me print a tag for you.”

And instead of printing paper it’ll pop up and say, “We see you have a digital tag; do you want to use that?”

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG)

Exactly.

And there are a couple things that are really new about this. One is we’re able to integrate on the airport level, at the common use layer. That means one integration for many airlines. But still only at one airport.

But it also means that we’re starting to look at the electronic bag tag as a bit of a different concept. We’re moving from a static tag to a connected bag.

The electronic bag tag that we started out with was a kind of a dumb machine. It was a device attached to the suitcase. You update it once as a passenger, and that’s it. What we’ve built now, and this bag drop is the first proof point of that, is ways to communicate two ways with the electronic tag.

That means that you’re going to have very, very good tracking coverage. It also means that, with beacons placed in strategic points across the journey, you’re able to update the electronic bag tag at any given point in time.

PaxEx.Aero

So as it’s rolling through the system, a the beacon says, Seth’s bag 123, has just rolled by. But if I’ve changed my flights the system can update the tag?

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG) 

Yeah, right. You want to be on an earlier flight, or you’re not making a connection, or whatever.

This opens a lot of possibilities as well for intermodal as well. Imagine arriving in Orlando or Miami on a flight, and you’re going on a cruise. Imagine those bags that we already know are going to have to be on the cruise ship after arriving at the airport, automatically being re labeled, take us to this and this cruise ship at this and this cabin.

And also the other way around. If you’re at a cruise ship, your bag would maybe still be depicting your name and cabin number, but once it’s picked up by a van bringing you to the airport, you can have a beacon in the van automatically labeling all the bags with the proper destinations. You don’t have to touch your bag anymore in the airport.

That can all be done automatically, and it’s going to eliminate many pain points.

PaxEx.Aero

Tell me more about this cruise integration.

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG) 

Well, that integration isn’t there yet. But it’s really about the way that we look upon the electronic bag tag as a concept. So if you look at that as a connected device or connected bag, those kind of things become possible. You wouldn’t have to pick up your bag at the airport; it all gets handled in the background.

So it’s about more visibility on the bag, because you’re able to create a digital identity, or digital twin of the bag, so you can properly track it. But it’s also introducing a next level of seamless handling.

PaxEx.Aero

You mentioned a little bit ago how long we’ve been talking about this technology. Solid respect that you’re still here doing it. But you’ve also shifted during that time.

When you started, you were a, at some level, a hardware company. You made a tag, you made a little bit of software that managed it. Now you seem to be a software and integration company that occasionally batch manufactures some hardware. Is that a fair take?

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG)

Yeah, I see us currently as a platform or ecosystem, really. My goal is to make the electronic bag tag concept big, and the only way for that to work is by making everything interoperable. So what we saw is that integrating with an airline can take time. The sales process, the implementation process, the technical process. It all adds up.

And with the concept growing, you would expect more and more hardware suppliers coming online; that’s only logical. But I can tell you that an airline will not want to do multiple integrations, and you can never explain, I think, to a passenger, that they can use their electronic tag with airline A but not with airline B. So what we started building is basically a layer or ecosystem in which we integrate airlines and hardware suppliers to create this one interoperable solution.

PaxEx.Aero

When you talk about interoperability, does or will that extend to other tag manufacturers? Or do you want to keep some exclusivity if someone else made a tag?

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG) 

We very much welcome other manufacturers. That’s the goal.

I see ourselves more as a developer of the ecosystem. We’ve onboarded BagID. We’re talking to two others. The more the merrier, really, because you need to be able to offer people a choice. And the key thing that we’re doing is make sure that everything is the right quality for the airline to accept it, and to make sure that everything works properly.

PaxEx.Aero

Technically how does that work? Are you publishing and licensing an API and standards that says this is what the screen has to look like, this is the information that gets sent, the information that comes back. And others can build hardware as long as it meets those standards?

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG) 

Yes, and we have some some standards with regards to security. We value the security part very highly. If something like this gets gets hacked, or people can use it for the wrong purposes it dies very quickly.

So we use hardware encryption. Our platform gets a request from a user: I want to update my tag, this is my PNR, this my last name. Our platform checks which airline, talks to the [Departure Control System], gets all the information back. We create a tag entry at the airline and a digital representation of that for the bag.

What we do then is we encrypt the data such a way that can only be decrypted on the device where it’s meant to be transferred on to and no one in the middle can tamper with that data.

PaxEx.Aero

It seems like you can do that easily with your tags, because you know the hardware encryption. If I want to make my own tags, do I just have to agree to your hardware encryption protocols?

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG) 

I mean, there’s different ways of going about this. We don’t enforce people to use our firmware. That would would be too inflexible. And we believe that whoever is developing a tag should do whatever they want, as long as it’s secure enough. So we can be flexible there as well, as long as it’s secure.

PaxEx.Aero

Then the other part of this is then the economic side of it. Selling tags, I understand how that business works. When you start getting into this sort of ecosystem world. Is it like each bag that gets tagged costs a penny kind of thing? Don’t tell me the numbers, or do tell me the numbers. But is it that sort of approach?

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG) 

So I won’t tell you the numbers. But it is a usage based charge.

We have multiple models in the market, because we’ve learned that, especially regionally, there can be very different preferences with what works for whom. So we have to maintain a certain degree of flexibility.

But, generally, it is usage based. And always under the promise and realization of savings. We know we can never be more expensive than than the alternative.

PaxEx.Aero

You mentioned bag tracking with the beacons as part of the tag update process How is that playing out?

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG) 

What’s relevant to mention there is that we’re going to also provide airports and airlines with the relevant information.

PaxEx.Aero

For the tracking, are you investing with airlines to put beacons places and then maintaining all that data, managing, then coming up with some way to sell it back later and make money off this?

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG) 

I’d rather see as us enabling the airport and airline to put in the infrastructure that they want, and we’d simply facilitate as much as possible.

PaxEx.Aero

So you’re not going to get into the beacon business also?

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG) 

I mean, probably, we’ll have to incorporate a data flow in our platform to keep it interoperable. But I don’t see us developing beacons.

PaxEx.Aero

Are you ready to stop developing the tags and become only a software player.

Jasper Quak (BAGTAG) 

We’ll see what the future holds. We could spin that off.

We’ve been doing this for 11 years now, so we have a fair amount of experience with what the hardware should be doing. And we’re now taking a new approach to hardware development. We’re looking at it in a more modular way where potentially other other companies could build their products on the modules that we can supply to them, but we’ll have to see how that turns out.

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• BAGTAG Adds Airport Kiosk Integration with Amadeus