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/

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/

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." This is a quote you probably heard many times, right? I talked about how to figure that out with Ravi Shankar, Global Head of Digital Marketing and Analytics at AirAsia who is one of the brightest minds in airline digital space. We talked about AirAsia digital marketing, how they measure it, how they organize their team, what they insource, how they use data, how they chose which digital channels they will be on….   Ravi also talked about the transformation journey AirAsia is on – from selling flights only to becoming an OTA, a tech company and how this will change the way his digital marketing team will work in the future. You can find the link to the full article with a lot of additional resources here: https://www.diggintravel.com/airline-digital-marketing-air-asia-case/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show_notes

Think of this episode as "the best of" or "greatest hits" episode. Why? Because in this episode we summed up the key learnings from our 2020 Airline Digital Research and Survey, where we surveyed 49 airlines on how they do digital product development, digital marketing and digital optimization. But there is more; on top of the 5 key learnings from our research you can also hear best quotes from the top digital experts we interviewed during our research. Top quotes are from leaders from Airbnb, Google, CDOs of Wizz Air and EL AL Israel Airlines, best-selling book author from Harvard and more. NOTE: You can get the full 2020 Airline Digital Yearbook, a 92 page PDF with more than 50 charts, benchmarks and real-life examples here: https://bit.ly/3fakYqO

You sent questions, we answered them. For our first podcast milestone, the 10th episode we did a special Q&A session with an airline industry analyst Henry Harteveldt.  You asked us about the airline industry outlook, how soon will the recovery happen, which segment will come back first, changes in passenger behavior, blocking the middle seat, ancillary revenue, distribution, what will happen with investments in digital and much more. Plus Henry shared some of the insights from the great research he’s doing with the Atmosphere Research Group. You can find the link to the full Q&A article with Henry here: https://www.diggintravel.com/airline-industry-trends-2020-2021/

Ronny Kohavi, an expert in experimentation and personalization, discusses the role of online experiments during the current crisis and the need for a trustworthy environment for testing. He shares great examples from Amazon and Microsoft, and explores the connection between experimentation, personalization, and machine learning.

"Where is the value in airline retailing?" - this is a report McKinsey & Company published recently. I talked to Nina Wittkamp, one of the authors about airline retailing and 3 future distribution scenarios.  Will consolidation happen? Will airlines become travel platforms? Will players like Google and Amazon take over? Check out the second part of our talk with Nina to hear more about these scenarios. Listen to the full interview with Nina to learn more about: Where is the value in airline retailing? What are the key challenges of airline distribution and retailing? The 3 components of airline retailing (NDC, One Order, Dynamic Offers) The 4 key enablers of airline retailing Future airline distribution and retailing scenarios The most important elements of successful innovation programs You can find the link to the full interview article with the link for McKinsey report here: https://www.diggintravel.com/3-future-scenarios-for-airline-distribution/