2021 Airline Digital Trends [Insights from 23 Airline Digital Experts]

The goal of this paper is to provide you with insights into key 2021 airline digital trends that will define the airline industry in the future.

What is the best way to learn what will be the key 2021 airline digital trends? Probably to ask the airline industry’s digital leaders themselves.

At the beginning of January 2021, I reached out to more than 20 airline digital leaders and they provided us with their thoughts. I’m happy that 23 airline digital experts agreed to participate in this project and shared their views on the future of the airline digital landscape. We received great insights and more than 6,000 words on how your peers (airline digital leaders) see 2021 unfolding.

Wordcloud from more than 6.000 words and 23 quotes by airline digital leaders

As I read through all of these quotes (several times!), I tried to reflect to see if I could find common themes among the insights these airline digital leaders had provided. When I consolidated all the quotes, I found that I had a dilemma on how to structure the insights.

Should I group parts of different quotes in areas that are connected to highlight the trends?

In the end I decided not to edit any of the quotes and to leave all of them in their original, full form. Each of the experts provided their unique view, and only the full quotes show their perspective on the airline digital outlook. You can find the full quotes in this paper.

2021 Airline Digital Trends – Key Areas Identified by Airline Leaders

What I did to help you think about the 2021 airline digital trends was to identify the areas these digital leaders talked about, and the ones which I see as important in the future.

Below are the 12 areas I identified as common themes across all quotes from our panel of airline digital leaders:

• Improving customer service
• Rebuilding confidence, driving demand and ancillary revenue
• Providing flexibility and removing friction
• Creating new digital habits and a touchless, contactless journey
• Growing your own digital platforms and direct distribution
• Self-servicing, biometrics and automation
• Digital DNA, design thinking, digital product development
• Leveraging data & analytics
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
• Digital bothism (doing more with less, maximizing marketing ROI)
• Personalization
• Evolution from user experience (UX) to digital experience (DX) to omni-channel customer experience (CX)

As you read through the insights, try to find these trends and think about how you can embed them into your airline digital strategy.

What Other Insights Will You Find in This Report?