The Diggintravel Podcast

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/  

Current situation will make a lot of us re-think. Overnight, we are all faced with the fact that nobody knows what will happen next. But what we know we will all need to change and adapt at some extent. But, how can you build a future-proof technology stack that will be up to the task to change or when the next "big change wave" hits us, just like the current one did? To get you some answers, I talked with a person who knows a thing or two about how to build modern, future-proof technology and digital platforms. Miha Kralj worked for IBM, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and is now at Accenture. We talked about key technology and digital trends that will impact us in the near future (2020-20205): - Key tech trends - How to start big digital transformation projects - 4 key pillars of future-proof technology setup (architecture, process, tooling, execution platform) - Transition from DevOps to BizOps and server-less - Who is responsible for digital transformation (CIO, CTO, CDO, CFO or CEO) - Why airlines are playing catch-up with big travel digital platforms - The technology that will have biggest impact in the future  You can find the link to the full interview article with notes and all links here: https://www.diggintravel.com/future-proof-airline-technology-2020-2025/    

"Business experimentation brings the scientific method to management decision-making. If you make changes without running experiments, you’re playing the lottery." - this is quote from our today's guest Stefan Thomke. He is a Harvard Business School Professor and author of the book Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments. Stefan is an authority on the management of innovation and has studied the best companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Booking.com, and Netflix, among others. What you will learn about business experimentation from this interview? Real examples from Booking.com, Microsoft, Apple, JCPenney, and the retail world Why is business experimentation much more than just digital optimization and A/B testing? How to organize for experimentation: 3 organizational models based on your size and maturity Why is generating hypotheses crucial for your experimentation? Experimentation platforms: build your own or use a third party tool? Testing big vs. small incremental changes 2 types of experiments: cause-effect experiments (optimization) and exploration discovery experiments How can airlines experiment in the offline, non-digital environment? You can find the link to the full interview article with transcripts and all links here: https://www.diggintravel.com/airline-innovation-business-experimentation/

In this episode we talked to Shiva Manjunath, Marketing and Conversion Optimization Manager at Gartner. Shiva is a huge experimentation and digital enthusiast, so we talked about how to build a great experimentation program in your organization. What can you learn from this interview: The conversion optimization process - where and how to start? Why is getting early wins crucial to your success? How to deal with your boss who doesn't understand the experimentation process and A/B testing Why personalization, conversion optimization, and experimentation go hand-in-hand How CRO helps you calculate the ROI of your personalization program How to scale up your experimentation Why "test to learn, not test to win" is the way to long-term conversion optimization process success How improv helps Shiva with experimentation and understanding users better You can find the link to the full interview article with transcripts and all links here: https://www.diggintravel.com/conversion-optimization-process/

We talked to Joel Goldberg, Chief Digital Officer at Wizz Air about airline industry, latest trends and how to build a digital program in a low cost environment. What else you will learn from this interview: Joel’s background and how he ended up in the airline industry. Why Wizz Air looks at digital transformation differently – learn about their pragmatic, ULCC approach to airline digital transformation? How to scale up – how they run a digital program and initiatives to support their fast-paced growth and large scale? Where do they see the biggest opportunities in data and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning? Why experimentation and a “fail fast – fail small” approach is the key to their digital success? Other interesting points that will make you look at the 2020 airline digital trends differently. You can find the link to the full interview article with transcripts and all links here: https://www.diggintravel.com/2020-airline-digital-trends/