The Diggintravel Podcast

 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/

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