The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we'll travel in the near future. The things that seemed complicated a year ago, like figuring out visa restrictions, seem so simple now. Now there are so many new factors and restrictions that impact airline user behavior. Each country has its own policies, entry rules, and quarantine rules that make life for travelers more difficult. A second challenge airlines have...
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I was in the middle of my podcast talk with Lukas Vermeer, Director of Experimentation at Booking.com, when it hit me. We were talking about how experimentation helps you build better travel digital products when Lukas said something really powerful. Rolling out features is not the goal. Solving customer problems is the goal. And we don’t know which of the features that we’re rolling out are actually...
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How can airline and airport robotics help our industry adapt and change for the better? This is the question I tried to better understand about airline and airport robotics. I'm not a big expert on robotics, but when I was doing research for big-picture digital trends for our 2021 Airline Digital Trends Report, robotic and automation always popped out. Statista's Digital Economy Compass 2020 report shows that...
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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...
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When I was thinking about what the first article and podcast in 2021 should be, the choice was quite easy. It had to be the 2021 travel industry outlook – more specifically, a look into the future of travel distribution. Why? The first reason is that everybody is intrigued with how the future of travel distribution and retailing will look, especially in the post-pandemic world. The second reason...
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“You’re actually writing about positive airline digital trends for 2021?” This was the question my colleague asked me when he saw my draft for this article. I think he thought I was going crazy. It all started a few weeks ago when I was sitting in my home office, Week 7 of lockdown and homeschooling. I was trying hard to think of a positive story to write for...
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Should airlines invest more (or less) in digital during the pandemic? In the past, I’ve written about how marketers see COVID-19 as a driver of change and emphasize the role of digital innovation during the pandemic. But to be honest, it's easy for me to say that, as I'm not running an airline during the biggest crisis our industry has ever seen. This is why I wanted...
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Do you want to know the quickest way to make your customers mad? Make them think you know nothing about how they feel or what their real problem is. In my case, I would start this article like this: "In these unprecedented times, because of the new coronavirus...
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Building a great digital experience is all about understanding your users. We've been beating the drum about how agile airline UX research should be the core element of your optimization process even way before COVID-19 hit us. I've written about how Ryanair is doing airline UX research at scale and how Virgin Atlantic built their user-centric digital optimization team. However, one can argue that COVID-19 changed your users’...
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"Data is the new oil" was probably one of the most popular airline clichés before COVID-19 hit. A data-driven airline definitely sounds smart, but can a data-driven approach help with airline recovery? Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the world's most renowned consultancy companies, definitely thinks so. They are stressing a data-driven approach as one of the key elements of recovery in their “Post-COVID-19 Flight Plan for...
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