Aviation Festival Asia is coming into land this Tuesday, and as part of my previews of the aeronautic week  I spoke to HappyOrNot APAC director Chris Armstrong, to find out more about how he got to play panel host and what he is looking forward to most this year.  

HappyOrNot is the global leader in instant customer and employee satisfaction reporting. Using a powerful and lean SaaS solution, adaptable data collection and the iconic 4 Smileys emoji, HappyOrNot is used by 170 airports and airlines, including Heathrow, AENA, AAI, Incheon Airport, Emirates and Etihad.

With a background in sales and marketing, at companies like Fujitsu and Tableau, Chris has picked up almost two decades of experience, with six in Asia. Invaluable wisdom for a man charged with the responsibility of ‘increasing happiness for more than half the world’s population’.

How did you get involved with The Aviation Festival?

CA) We are enabling The Aviation Festival to measure their visitor satisfaction at the key experience points throughout the event with our HappyOrNot Smiley Terminals and our analytics and reporting solution. As Adam Ball [from organisers, Terrapin] and I were talking, the opportunity to host the Airport T.EX seminar track and moderate the panel came up and I jumped at the chance.

Without giving too much away, what can we expect from your presentation?

Our panel is ‘Creating a seamless on the ground experience’ and we have some amazing panellists. What excites me most is that we work with over 170 airports and airlines around the world and we enable them to collect instant, continuous and extremely insightful data to improve their business. But, we don’t always get to hear exactly how they are using that in practice. So, this is a chance to hear from some of the smartest people in the business on exactly how they are affecting change with data.

Why should we come and see you?

Because I’ll be on the stage with people who you want to hear from!

Who or what are you looking forward to most at the festival?

Because I work across APAC I don’t always get to spend as much time as I would like with our customers or those businesses that we are going to work with in the future. So, for me it’s a great chance to catch up with our friends and our future friends, face to face.

What excites you most about the future of tech, aviation and how do you see HappyOrNot fitting into that future?

As a regular flyer and a data geek I have to say what excites me most is the continuing focus on getting me in and out of those four, six or eight airports per month, as efficiently as possible. It’s not possible without instant, continuous data and as the global leader in collecting that data we are front and centre of this innovation.

Make sure to check out the HappyOrNot booth  over at E11. And, click here to find out more about the ‘Creating a seamless on the ground experience’ session, where Chris will be joined by American Airlines’ Thomas Gunathar, Catherine De Leon from Cebu Pacific Air and Riyadh Airports’ marketing director Saud Alsabhan. Don’t forget to come back next time for my interview with SAGA’s Hervé Gueusquin.