

The Diggintravel Podcast
Iztok Franko
Success stories told by the digital leaders. At best you’ll get inspired to do great digital work. At worst you’ll learn about new interesting people from airline, travel, digital and experimentation world. Narrated by Iztok Franko, founder of Diggintravel.com and a digital enthusiast.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Feb 18, 2021 • 37min
A Practical Approach to Airline and Airport Robotics and Innovation
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

Jan 20, 2021 • 45min
2021 Travel Industry Outlook [Retailing and Distribution]
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

Dec 31, 2020 • 36min
Diggintravel Academy Group chat [Reflection on 2020 and trends for 2021]
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

Dec 7, 2020 • 35min
Finnair Digital Transformation [How Airlines Adapt to COVID-19]
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

Nov 11, 2020 • 40min
Rui Pereria, Director of Product Design & UX Research at eDreams and former Head of UX Research at Ryanair
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

Sep 21, 2020 • 30min
Airline Recovery and The Future Digital Skills
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

Sep 10, 2020 • 45min
Why UX Research Matters Even More in the Post-COVID-19 World
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/

Sep 3, 2020 • 45min
A 5-Step Action Plan for A Data-driven Airline [Ido Biger, CDO & CIO at EL AL Israel Airlines]
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

Aug 25, 2020 • 44min
5 Key Principles of Modern Airline Digital Products [LATAM Case Study]
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

Jul 28, 2020 • 31min
3 Successful Etihad Innovation Cases that Address COVID-19 Challenges
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


