KLM launched Meet & Seat last year, allowing passengers the opportunity to choose who they sit next to.

Service

KLM Meet & Seat allows passengers to identify their Facebook and Linked In accounts whilst booking. When choosing seats, they can browse the profiles of other passengers who have chosen to share their profiles. Passengers can then select to sit together, and contact other passengers via social media.

Interactive

Passengers can get to know their travel companions weeks before boarding the plane, with seat selections made from 90 days until 48 hours before departure. When new passengers book onto the flight and provide their Facebook and Linked In profiles, passengers who have opted into the service are sent an email – meaning they can ‘upgrade’ their travel buddy if they spot someone they prefer. This provides an excellent opportunity for ongoing engagement.
It’s business

KLM’s portrayal of the service is as a networking opportunity, with the KLM Meet & Seat video depicting two businessmen meeting in the airport lounge, talking business on the plane and sharing a cab from their destination.

Matchmaking

Of course, popular media, and no doubt passengers, have highlighted KLM Meet & Seat as a potentially useful matchmaking tool. NMA TV in their video, KLM to use social media to let passengers choose seatmate have gone so far as to suggest using it to recruit members of the mile high club.

Flights

KLM Meet & Seat is offered to bookings with one passenger, on KLM Flights between Amsterdam and New York, San Francisco and Sao Paulo.

Getting Social

KLM engage well on social media. Previous campaigns have included locating passengers who have checked in on Foursquare and awarding them prize packs and upgrades. The KLM Twitter account offers 24 hour customer service and their current KLM Facebook promotion allows users to try on 7 KLM stewardess uniforms from the archives. To incentivise sharing, users who share the competition with 5 friends go into the draw for a poster size print of themselves in uniform.

PR

KLM’s Meet & Seat has garnered international media attention, including mainstream newspapers in Australia, which lies well outside the flight paths the service is offered to.

Overall KLM Meet & Seat is a fun, opt-in service which has garnered huge media attention, and no doubt excellent passenger good will.