This is the fourth podcast in our Airline UX Series in partnership with 815Labs!

In this series, we’re speaking with top airline and travel UX leaders to uncover the secrets behind building exceptional digital experiences.

This episode is a special one, recorded on the road in Belgrade with Srdjan Prokić, Head of E-Commerce at Air Serbia. Srdjan shares his journey of building Air Serbia’s mobile app from scratch and offers practical insights into mobile-first design, collaborating with UX agencies, and using user feedback to tackle complex airline challenges.

From simplifying payment flows to innovative features like the histogram for flexible pricing, Srdjan provides real-world examples of how Air Serbia creates seamless mobile experiences.

RESOURCES:

You can find the full article with examples, key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-ux-series-mobile-first-design/

This is the third podcast in our Airline UX Series in partnership with 815Labs!

In this series we're speaking with top airline and travel UX leaders to uncover what it takes to build outstanding digital experiences.

This time, our guest is Martyn Reding—former Head of Digital Experience for an airline at Virgin Atlantic and now Director of User Experience Design at Expedia. He also developed his own platform where he is mentoring designers and managers from the global UX community.

So, Martyn really is one of the best people from our industry to talk about digital experience and UX design.

RESOURCES:

You can find the full article with examples, key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-ux-design-teams-in-travel/

Artificial intelligence is developing so fast that we just had to share this! A few months ago, ChatGPT was an interesting new gadget; now, AI is revolutionizing how we approach airline digital marketing. AI tools can now analyze your websites and campaign landing pages. Even more impressively, they can evaluate images like your airline ads and creatives. In our latest episode we provide you these and many other cases of practical AI applications for your daily work. You'll also find examples of how Lufthansa and Eurowings Digital are pioneering with internal AI tools for smarter operations and enhanced customer insights.

RESOURCES:

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat here:

https://diggintravel.com/the-latest-airline-ai-news-airline-marketing/ You can find how airline marketers can build relevant, timely, trustworthy customer experiences on autopilot with AI here:

https://useinsider.com/sirius-ai-generative-ai-solution-for-customer-experience/

Today, I'm reconnecting with a familiar voice, Ravi Shankar Mallavarapu. I first met Ravi when he held the position of Chief Growth Officer at AirAsia. He was one of the first guests on our podcast back in 2020, sharing insights about his efforts to transform AirAsia's digital marketing team into a modern growth marketing unit.

Ravi's journey has been a captivating one, especially his recent transition to CMO at CARSOME. Our conversation delves into the lessons he's learned, including what he'd do differently if he were to work for an airline again.

I believe many of you will find his insights, especially regarding his global branding campaign with football legend Eric Cantona and the challenges of measuring its impact, particularly enlightening.

And, for those curious about the intersection of AI and marketing, we dive into discussions about ChatGPT and other related topics towards the end.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Ravi here:

https://diggintravel.com/key-pillars-of-modern-airline-digital-marketing/

We went back to our roots with this podcast! Diggintravel was crafted with a single mission in mind – to serve up practical insights tailor-made for you, the airline digital professional.

In this episode - talk with Joonas Leppävuori, Digital Product Manager at Finnair - we discussed in detail how Jonas and his team are doing booking funnel optimization. Joonas explained how they optimized all key pages of their booking flow (flight results page, passenger info page, seat selection page).

If you are an airline digital pro working on increasing the conversion of your website or APP you'll like this episode.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Joonas here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-booking-funnel-optimization-finnair/

Yes, we had to do it! A special episode dedicated to ChatGPT and potential airline applications.

There's tons of articles and podcast about ChatGPT, we felt there is a need to do a top-down, structured overview of ChatGPT and why it matters for airline and travel digital professionals.

Our guest, Bostjan Kozuh has finished several data science trainings at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University and is a mentor for many companies on AI strategy. Bostjan was also analytics instructor in Diggintravel Airline Digital Academy.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Bostjan here:

https://diggintravel.com/chatgpt-for-airlines/

This is another episode where we talked about how airlines can leverage data sicence and artificial intelligence. And if we were to pinpoint the most significant area for airlines where data science can have a substantial impact, it would undoubtedly be in airline dynamic pricing and dynamic offers.

 And yes, of course we talk about ChatGPT and possible impact for airlines again as well.

Mike Robinson has worked in various business and technology (biztech) roles, integrating data science and technology into teams focused on revenue growth or innovation.

Mike’s most recent experience was at Amazon, working on the Prime Team and CRM, as well as at Lyft, a rideshare company. Prior to that, he worked in the airline industry for a long time, at Amadeus Team in Nice and Frontier Airlines in Denver.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Mike here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-dynamic-pricing/

This is a second part of our talk with Andres Bucchi, Chief Data Officer at LATAM Airlines.

In Part I. we talked about experimentation, this second part is about data science and how airlines can integrate data science in large organization.

Andres shared his experience from LATAM airlines and his past learning from BigTech companies and work at Uber.

And yes, of course we had to talk about ChatGPT as well.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Andres here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-data-science-latam-airlines/

Today, we have a special episode because we have reversed the roles. Typically it's Iztok who interviews airline and other digital experts, but today Iztok was the one being interviewed. Iztok was interviewed  by Dario Martinho from Branchspace. As you probably know Branchspace is supporting this podcast and Diggintravel digital research.

Dario interviewed Iztok about the 2023 Yearbook and research, what were the main insights and learning from the 55 airlines Iztok surveyed. They also talked about evolution of Diggintravel research and more importantly evolution of airline ecommerce and digital optimization over the last couple of years, so from 2017 when we started with our first research.

I hope you'll enjoy this episode, we definatelly did enjoy being on the other side of the microphone. Also don't worry, we'll have new airline expert guests very soon.

This is a quick update about the latest Diggintravel research project -  the 2023 Airline Digital Optimization Yearbook.

2023 Airline Digital Optimization Yearbook is the result of the most comprehensive annual airline digital research and benchmarks in existence. It's more than 100 pages of content and benchmarks from 55 surveyed airlines.

You can learn more (and download your PDF copy) about the Yearbook here:

https://diggintravel.com/2023-airline-digital-optimization-yearbook/

Today we have a special episode for you! We talked to Andres Bucchi, Chief Data Officer at LATAM Airlines. We often talk about data and experimentation at Diggintravel, but mostly in digital ecosystem.

Andres shared insights how LATAM Airlines is planning to do experiments for better decision making in the physical world: in revenue management, call center and other areas.

Andres shared so many great insights during our chat so we split the podcast in two parts. In part two we'll talk about data science and ChatGPT.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Andres here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-scientific-decision-making-latam/

Today you can listen to insights from airline digital expert, Ismael Monzon. Ismael is a CRO and Analytics Team Lead at Air Europa. Ismael and Air Europa digital team are a playbook case of how to build your digital optimization and CRO program from ground up, step-by-step. This is why, we're really glad that Ismael was willing to share his team's story and the learnings from their journey.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Ismael here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-optimization-and-cro-team-air-europa/

This is the second podcast in our new Airline Leader Interview Series, where we talk with industry UX leaders about how to build a great digital experience and user experience (UX) for airlines.

Together with our new podcast partner, 815Labs—experts in building top-tier airline UX—we’ve structured a series of episodes that bring together insights from leaders across various perspectives to understand what it takes to create exceptional airline UX.

In this second episode Carlos Lima Santana, Senior Product Designer shared his unique views, and broad understanding in what goes into designing great airline digital experience.

Carlos talked about the basic principles of UX design, why you need to cover the basic first, the balance between doing the most obvious things and innovating new, about the most important trait for a great UX designer, testing and many more.

RESOURCES:

You can find the full article with examples, screenshots, key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-ux-what-sets-top-designers-apart/

This is a third chat in series of talks with female airline digital leaders. We talked to Eveline Lee, Senior Manager Digital Channel Products, Product Innovation, Payments at Scoot.

Eveline started her airline career 10 years ago when she joined Asian low-cost airline Scoot as one of the first team members in their digital team.

Since then, Scoot’s digital team has evolved and matured immensely, and I’m glad Eveline was willing to talk about the learnings from their journey.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Eveline here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-talks-eveline-lee-scoot/

Our today's guest has amazing airline background and experience. Ursula Silling, CEO at Branchspace, was prior Chief Commercial Officer at Kenya Airways, Commercial Director at Air Malta and EVP Commercial at Brussels Airlines, and worked with many other airlines.

We talked to Ursula about challenges airlines face with digital transformation and about how to build modern airline digital experience and platforms.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Urusla here:

https://diggintravel.com/how-to-build-a-modern-airline-digital-experience/

We got a great show for you today. I talked to Mariana Fonseca Medina, who is currently VP of Digital at Virgin Voyages. Before joining Virgin, Mariana was Managing Director of Digital Customer Experience at American Airlines and has worked on airline Ancillary Merchandising and Digital Analytics Strategy in the past.

We talked about her experience of building digital teams, both large and small, we talked about how to define meaningful metrics and OKRs for digital products and tons of other things.

If you want to learn more about airline or travel digital, you’ll love this one.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Mariana here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-product-teams/

Just a quick update from Iztok about the Diggintravel new airline digital research project.

A new podcast chat with a special guest coming soon!

After two years of this podcast we go back to the beginning, looking at the big picture and what lies ahead for travel and airline industry.

Today's podcast guest, Tino Klaehne, Director of Strategic Innovation and Intelligence at Lufthansa Innovation Hub, explained what he and his team are doing (spoiler alert: a lot of cool, agile and unconventional stuff) to predict what will happen in the future.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Tino here:

https://diggintravel.com/predicting-the-future-of-travel/

I talked to an experienced digital professional, Matt Ravlich. Matt is currently a Managing Director for Alberta Consulting Group (ACG), where he specializes in optimizing their clients’ digital experiences using the current tools they have and helping them prepare for the future. Prior to that, Matt was Manager of Digital Analytics and Optimization at the second-largest Canadian airline, WestJet Airlines, where his main focus was growing maturity levels with WestJet analytics and optimization programs.

Matt shared his insights on how airlines can grow and evolve their digital optimization programs. Other topics we talked about:

• Digital analytics, testing, and optimization tools
• Should you do optimization and personalization within the same team?
• Leveraging first- and third-party data for your optimization activities

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Matt here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-optimization-maturity/

Iztok and his co-host Henry Harteveldt talked to Jake Maloney, Senior Manager, Ecommerce at Frontier Airlines.

We were thrilled to speak with Jake because Frontier Airlines is a digital commerce powerhouse. In its June 2022 quarter, Frontier reported a record $74.96 in ancillary revenue per passenger. Jake shared how Froniter ecommerce team is organized, how they build great digital products like Discount Den, and other things that drive Frontier's ancillary revenue success.

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Jake here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-ancillary-revenue-leaders-frontier-airlines-case/

Iztok and his co-host Henry Harteveldt talked to Michaela Hermans, Head of Digital Transformation and Innovation at Wizz Air. Michaela shared  a lot of great insights and learning from their digital transformation journey, including:

• why digital and innovation are enablers for Wizz Air's rapid growth
• why they are building cross-functional product teams
• why Wizz Air is not doing digital for the sake of digital

You can find the full article with key key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat with Michaela here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-innovation-and-transformation-wizz-air-case/

Iztok and his co-host Henry Harteveldt talked to Mark Hursh, Senior Director of Digital Customer Experience at Southwest Airlines, to learn how they build innovative digital products. Mark shared  a lot of great insights and learning from their journey to build one of the best airline digital teams.

• ideation - how to get ideas for innovative digital products
• research and testing - how they do it and how COVID changed this process
• optimization and testing - why and how is Southwest Airlines digital team doing testing at large scale
• going beyond the website and app - how do they optimize other digital channels like in-flight entertainment portal
• growing their digital team - what kind of roles and profiles are they looking for at Southwest Airlines

You can find the full article with the key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat here:

https://diggintravel.com/innovative-airline-digital-products-southwest-airlines-case

In the third episode of our Airline Digital Cabin and Retailing series Iztok were Henry joined by Viktorija Kucerova, Senior Consultant for Marketing, Strategy and Sustainability at SITA.

The trio talked about all kinds of airline digital, ecommerce, and onboard retailing concepts:

• The importance of product development, testing and innovation
• The importance of making the passenger's journey as unique as possible
• The importance of negative space
• The importance of focusing on the cabin experience and cabin crew
• The importance of cabin crew digitialization
• The importance of collaboration

You can find the full article with the key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-cabin-talks/

Earlier this year, we launched the Airline Leader Interview Series, where we spoke with industry leaders about high-level trends and strategies. But now, we’ve decided to dig deeper into one key topic: how to build a great digital experience and user experience (UX) for airlines. Together with our new podcast partner, 815Labs—experts in building top-tier airline UX—we’ve structured a series of episodes that bring together insights from leaders across various perspectives to understand what it takes to create exceptional airline UX. This first episode kicks things off with Norbert Krizsan from 815Labs. Not only does Norbert have extensive experience building airline UX from scratch, but he’s also an external lecturer in UX design. He has held nearly every UX role possible—from designer to researcher to Head of UX—and now serves as a Design Strategy advisor. Norbert helped us structure this entire series and is the perfect guest to set the stage for the episodes to come.

Our goal is to bring various great UX leaders to share their perspectives on different UX topics, so by the end of the series, you’ll have a much deeper understanding of how to create outstanding airline digital experiences.

RESOURCES:

You can find the full article with examples, screenshots, key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat here:

https://diggintravel.com/key-ux-concepts-for-airline-success/

In the second episode of our Airline Digital Retailing series, Iztok and Henry talked to airline ecommerce and ancillary expert Lee Barrett.

Lee’s impressive airline career includes roles in Cabin Crew Development and Performance and Development Management at Air New Zealand at its head office in Auckland, Head of Customer Service at JetStar in Tokyo, Director of Ancillary Revenue at Viva Aerobus in Mexico City, and Director of Customer Experience and Ancillary Revenue for LEVEL in London. Lee is currently the “Future of Check-In” Program Manager at Auckland Airport. His extensive mix of operational roles – including working with cabin crew – and business roles provided the right mix for a lively, fascinating conversation.

You can find the full article with the key concepts, quotes, and other notes from our talk with Lee and Henry here:

https://diggintravel.com/insights-for-ancillary-revenue-and-airline-onboard-retailing/

This is the first episode in our new Airline Digital Cabin Talks. It's a new series in which we'll talk about airline digital, ancillary revenue and onboard retail.

In the first episode we talked to Emilio Chacon Monsant. Emilio’s background is in ancillary products, digital commerce, and the digital experience at four airlines, including two network carriers – Aeromexico and Avianca – and two low-cost airlines, Vueling and Ryanair. Emilo is currently VP, Airline Relationships & Ancillary Revenue at Global Onboard Partners.

Travel industry analyst Henry Harteveldt joined us as a special co-host for the new podcast series, to provide his unique perspective on airline retailing.

You can find the full article with the key concepts, quotes, and other notes from our talk with Emilo and Henry here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-cabin-successful-onboard-retailing/

Joe Sinclair, Senior Digital Analyst at Air New Zealand, joined the show to talk about how digital analytics team evolved at Air New Zealand.

Joe shared many valuable lessons learned by Air New Zealand's airline digital analytics team. He explained how they started from scratch with their digital analytics team, and talked about how the team grew and how they are now working and providing insights throughout the whole airline customer journey.

You can find the full article with the key concepts, quotes, and other notes from our talk with Joe here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-analytics-evolution-air-new-zealand/

Greg Dowling, Global Director of Business Insights at Glassbox joined our chat to explain how airline digital pros can really figure out what's going on in their booking funnel. 

If you want to increase conversion rate, if you want to improve your digital experience - there is one thing you really need to do. You need to understand your customers, their struggles, and their key digital pain points.

Greg explained how you can understand the WHY - why your customers behave in a certain way and how to use this knowledge to increase the conversion rates on your website or digital app.

You can find the full article with the key concepts, quotes, and other notes from our talk with Greg here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-experience-analytics/

Today, we bring you another great digital expert – Ben Labay, Managing Director at Speero. Speero is a digital optimization agency built by the people who founded the CXL blog, one of the best resources available for conversion optimization and experimentation. Ben is an industry leader, a speaker on all things digital research and experimentation, and a conservation science consultant.

Check out the full podcast interview if you’re interested in:

• How to make faster and better decisions
• 3 places to start your testing and experimentation program
• Different organizational models you can use to set up your airline experimentation program
• What kind of experimentation tools to use
• How to be innovative with A/B testing and experimentation

You can find the full article with the key concepts, quotes, and other notes from our talk with Ben here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-experimentation-talks/

In this podcast episode, we'll be very hands-on and practical. I get asked a lot about how to implement website analytics by airline people, and if you want to learn about that too - this episode is for you.

Liliana García Magaña, who works on Business Intelligence and Analytics at a Mexican low-cost airline VivaAerobus, explained in detail how they implemented new advanced digital analytics, how they designed new analytics framework, and how they deal with the challenge of omnichannel tracking. Liliana and her team built a robust web analytics model which now allows them to measure every user interaction across different channels.

You can find the full article with the key concepts, quotes, and other notes from our talk with Liliana here:

https://diggintravel.com/how-to-implement-advanced-airline-digital-analytics/

Today's talk it's all about marketing and innovation. Alberto Terol Conthe, a Head of Customer Experience Design & Development at Iberia, shared his insights on how marketing and innovation are connected.

Even more, Alberto shared his framework that connects Design Thinking, Strategic Foresight, and Growth Marketing among other things. Listen to my chat with Alberto to learn about all these things and check the article on the link below for the full visual model of the Framework.

You can find the full article with the Framework, quotes, and other notes from our talk with Alberto here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-innovation-talks-iberia/

Listen to this episode of the Airline Talks series and learn from Ivan Karlovic, Director, Data Analytics at Norwegian. Ivan shared tons of interesting insights and his experience from building a new data team at Norwegian. Here are some highlights from our talk

• Why and how Norwegian is building an internal data team
• What kind of data roles are they looking for
• How is the team organized
• What are the use cases and opportunities

You can find the full article with quotes and other notes from our talk with Ivan here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-data-talks-norwegian/

This is the first episode in our Airline Digital Talks series, where airline digital talks will talk about their work.

Listen to this episode and learn from Remus Moraru, a digital expert from Wizz Air. Remus talked about data, analytics, experimentation, mobile apps, and how Wizz Air and its digital team are adapting to COVID challenges.

You can find the full article with quotes and other notes from our talk with Remus here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-talks-wizz-air/

In today's podcast episode I talked to Emre Güney, Head of Global Marketing, Lifecycle at Skyscanner. I know Emre back from his airline days when he was Head of Digital Product & Growth Marketing at Pegasus Airlines.

Emre talked about customer retention and how to do retention marketing in travel. Especially in airline industry where we suffer from low differentiation, commoditization and low frequency is the hardest part of marketing.

Emre provided many other insights on content marketing, digital product and learnings from running his own personal newsletter about growth marketing.

You can find the full article with quotes and other notes from our talk with Emre here:

https://bit.ly/3w9GpRO

Diggintravel Podcast is back for our fifth year, and we couldn't think of a better way to start the new season than with one of the top digital minds in the airline industry, Ricard Vila, Chief Digital Officer at LATAM Airlines.

In this talk, Ricard explained how LATAM Airlines built a unique ecosystem to succeed and move faster in the digital world.

Ricard's talk goes beyond the usual digital transformation buzzwords and narratives, delving into concrete concepts and examples--as you'll see some are quite unconventional--to illustrate how LATAM is actively re-shaping its digital culture.

This was one of the most enlightening talks on our podcast, so we highly recommend it to anyone interested in understanding how airline digital transformation unfolds.

RESOURCES:

You can find the full article with examples, screenshots, key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat here:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-culture-latam-airlines/

In this episode, you can listen to insights from an airline industry expert and researcher Henry Harteveldt from Atmosphere Research.

Henry talked about the research commissioned by the Accelya Air Transformation Lab and conducted by Atmosphere Research is called “Airlines: A path back to profitability”. The research is a great analysis of the latest airline retailing and other industry trends.

What can you learn from this podcast:

• the latest travel industry recovery outlook
• how will new 'changed' traveler look like
• how are airlines adapting to the pandemic, especially on the digital and retailing front
• how airlines are transforming into leaner, more agile airlines, and what does this mean for the airline digital pros

 You can find the link to the website article with data and figures from the research here: https://bit.ly/3n9p7Rb

 I see so many airlines build new digital solutions to adapt to the new reality of travel.  The move to a touchless, contactless, digital journey is on every airline agenda.  But what is the process behind building these new airline digital solutions?

I talked to Diego Brunot, UX Lead at American Airlines. Diego and his team work on what is now a crucial part of the airline travel journey, the post-booking digital experience.

Listen to the new episode of the Diggintravel Podcast about how to understand new traveler behavior in the post-COVID recovery period to build new digital solutions.

LINK TO THE ARTICLE WITH OTHER LINKS:

https://bit.ly/3fuNXsT

In this special episode, I talked to Lukas Vermeer, Director of Experimentation at Booking.com.

We talked about how travel digital giants like Booking.com use experimentation to build great travel digital products.

What can you learn from this podcast:

- How Booking.com is organized and how they changed as they scaled up experimentation

- What kind of experiments you should run and in what cases

- How to integrate experimentation and user research

- What kind of metrics to use

- What are the specifics of building travel digital products

See more about this interview along with examples and visuals here:

https://diggintravel.com/travel-digital-products-booking-com-case/

On today's episode will talk about robots and innovation with Innovation expert and visionary Ravinder Ravi Singh.

Robotics and robotic process automation were one of the digital trends I identified when I was doing research for our 2021 Airline Digital Trends report. AirAsia recently talked about robotic process automation, and Turkish Airlines is doing it. To learn more about it I talked to Ravinder Ravi Singh. Ravi was the Chief Information and Innovation Officer working for an airline, and he built airline robots with his team. I think Ravi's ideas on how to improve airport passenger experience with new digital touchpoints are really relevant for airline digital marketers. We also talked about innovation and how to do it in a time of crisis like the one airlines are facing now.

LINK TO WEBSITE ARTICLE WITH ADDITIONAL INFO:

https://bit.ly/3uaRK3C

To start year 2 of the Diggintravel Podcast on a high note we talked about one of the hottest topics in the travel industry: the 2021 outlook for travel retailing and distribution. Who will build the ultimate travel retailing platform? Airlines, OTAs, Google, or Amazon?

Our guest Mauricio Prieto is a travel visionary and an expert in travel distribution and travel. Mauricio was one of the co-founders of eDreams, one of the biggest OTAs in Europe. 

Here are some other things you can learn about in this episode:

• 2021 travel industry outlook
• Why the pandemic made travel products more complex
• What I see as the 3 key elements of a successful travel digital business
• Mauricio's 4th additional ingredient that is crucial for scaling up your digital retailing
• How airlines can innovate in the current environment
• The future of work and education and how they impact travel

LINK TO WEBSITE ARTICLE WITH ADDITIONAL INFO:

https://bit.ly/2LNAY9k

In this special edition of Diggintravel Podcast, we did a group chat with four participants in our Airline Digital Academy. We talked about our 2020 learnings and 2021 expectations with:

• Barbara Zimmer, Manager of E-Distribution at Qatar Airways
• Mwajuma Salim, Head of Digital Commerce and Customer Experience at Kenya Airways
• Leda Koleilat, Senior Ecommerce Assistant at Qatar Airways
• Stanislava Yordanova, Senior Product Marketing Manager at PROS

Here is the full article "5 Positive Airline Digital Trends I Want to See Continue in 2021", with our chat summary and notes:

https://bit.ly/37ZRlb2

In this episode, Esamatti Vuolle, Head of Digital Commerce at Finnair talks about their digital transformation journey.

What else you can learn from this podcast:

• How Finnair digital transformation was disrupted by the pandemic and how they adapted
• What was his one key learning about digital
• Why Finnair built in-house digital teams and digital platform
• How Finnair agile customer-centric digital product development process works

BONUS: Please check the article on the link below to find out what are 4 dangerous animals to look for in your organization, that are threats to your digital projects. ARTICLE LINK: https://bit.ly/33SgVMR

Today you can learn from one of the best digital and UX experts in the travel industry - Rui Pereria, Director of Product Design & UX Research at eDreams and former Head of UX Research at Ryanair. What will you learn from this podcast?

• How eDreams adapted their digital and research activities during the COVID pandemic
• What mistake Rui was doing at Ryanair that he learned the most from
• How to do UX research at scale - eDreams is one of Spain's largest product design teams
• Other great UX and research tips

Here is also a link to the article with more info and other great digital and UX resources:

https://bit.ly/3ne3YE6

In this episode, Iztok Franko, founder of Diggintravel.com shares his views about airline recovery and how it will change airline digital marketing short-term and long-term. Topics covered:

• why airline digital & marketing should react to faster planning cycles
• how will new consumer behavior affect the digital experience
• what are the opportunities for airlines because of the new customer behavior
• what are the digital skills of the future

We also talked about the upcoming launch of the Diggintravel Airline Digital Academy and how it can help airlines prepare for the current challenges and new opportunities.

Link to Airline Digital Retailing Academy >> https://bit.ly/2EjWqPz

COVID-19 changed your user's behavior significantly. You need to understand the new context for your users, their fears, their key friction points before you do any other digital activities.

We talked about how to do that with Amanda Stockwell. She is a user research expert and one of the most popular instructors on LinkedIn Learning. She consults both Fortune 100 companies and start-ups on how to leverage user research to build better digital products. Amanda is also an instructor for Module 4 in our Airline Digital Academy.

In this episode of the Diggintravel Podcast, Amanda will explain:

• Why the change in user behavior and new COVID-19 context make user research more important than ever
• What kind of UX research method to chose for your digital projects
• How to do remote UX research
• How to integrate UX research into agile development teams and sprints

Link to the article with more info and great visual with an overview of different kinds of UX research methods:

https://bit.ly/3haHJvu

Link to the Airline Digital Academy:

https://diggintravel.com/academy/

Another exciting Diggintravel Podcast episode, featuring an in-depth discussion with Surya Kuchibotla, Head of eCommerce and Distribution at flyadeal.

Discover how flyadeal is building a modern digital commerce tech stack and leveraging technology to carve out a competitive edge. Key podcast highlights:

• Flyadeal's unique organizational model
• How flyadeal is running consolidated, end-to-end digital marketing campaigns utilizing CDP
• How to do airline personalization on three levels
• Flyadeal's approach to AI-driven personalization and conversational commerce on WhatsApp

RESOURCES:

You can find the full article with examples, screenshots, key concepts, quotes, and other notes from this chat here:

https://diggintravel.com/modern-airline-digital-commerce-stack-flyadeal/

You can find how airline marketers can build relevant, timely, trustworthy customer experiences on autopilot with AI here:

https://useinsider.com/sirius-ai-generative-ai-solution-for-customer-experience/

This week, Ido Bigger Chief Data Officer and CIO at EL AL Israel Airlines shared his story about the journey EL AL made to become a data-driven airline. 

If you want to learn how to implement modern, agile analytics and how to adopt a data-driven culture across the whole organization then you need to listen to this talk with Ido.

BONUS: If you'll listen to the end you'll see that Ido challenged me to a duel. What kind of duel? Listen to the full episode and you'll see.

One more thing! Don't forget to check the website article after you finish the podcast!

The article has a 5-step action plan based on Ido's recommendations on how to build a great data & analytics program.

Here is the link to the article:

https://bit.ly/2QMS3z9 

Vanesa Tejada, Head of Product at LATAM Airlines shares her story and view on key principles of building modern, agile digital products.

The key to building modern airline digital products is to combine experimentation with an agile, data-driven, customer-centric approach.

Vanesa shared great examples of how they do that in practice in a large LATAM organization that has more than 23 sites and 40 digital product teams.

One more thing! Don't forget to check the website article after you finish the podcast!

The article has a list of 5 key principles and links to all resources mentioned in our talk with Vanesa. Here is the link to the article:

https://bit.ly/2FYe2kB

Link to the Airline Digital Academy:

www.diggintravel.com/academy?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes

Can the current crisis also be an opportunity to innovate and accelerate your digital initiatives? We talked about this with Kai Ling Ting, Innovation Lead at Etihad Airways.

She explained how the Etihad innovation team not only tries to build digital solutions to address COVID-19 challenges but also changes the travel digital experience for the better in the long run.

We also talked about how Etihad cooperates with start-ups and how they foster innovation in a large airline organization environment.

Learn more about the 3 Etihad digital innovations we talked about in the podcast here (including links and pictures):

https://bit.ly/32Xjr4J

What are the latest travel demand trends? How is Skyscanner doing demand and traveller sentiment analysis? How will Skyscanner and meta-search evolve? Will the airline distribution landscape change in the future?

We talked about all of this in our recent podcast with Gavin Harris, a travel industry expert and Commercial Director at Skyscanner.

But there’s more!

You know we always want to be as hands-on and practical as possible at Diggintravel. So, you can see Skyscanner’s latest demand data in action and find examples of real agile travel analytics dashboards in this article:

https://diggintravel.com/agile-travel-analytics-external-demand-data/