The Diggintravel Podcast

This is a second part of our talk with Andres Bucchi, Chief Data Officer at LATAM Airlines. In Part I. we talked about experimentation, this second part is about data science and how airlines can integrate data science in large organization. Andres shared his experience from LATAM airlines and his past learning from BigTech companies and work at Uber.   And yes, of course we had to talk about Chat...

Today, we have a special episode because we have reversed the roles. Typically it's Iztok who interviews airline and other digital experts, but today Iztok was the one being interviewed. Iztok was interviewed  by Dario Martinho from Branchspace. As you probably know Branchspace is supporting this podcast and Diggintravel digital research. Dario interviewed Iztok about the 2023 Yearbook and researc...

This is a quick update about the latest Diggintravel research project -  the 2023 Airline Digital Optimization Yearbook.   2023 Airline Digital Optimization Yearbook is the result of the most comprehensive annual airline digital research and benchmarks in existence. It's more than 100 pages of content and benchmarks from 55 surveyed airlines.   You can learn more (and download your PDF copy) about...

Today we have a special episode for you! We talked to Andres Bucchi, Chief Data Officer at LATAM Airlines. We often talk about data and experimentation at Diggintravel, but mostly in digital ecosystem. Andres shared insights how LATAM Airlines is planning to do experiments for better decision making in the physical world: in revenue management, call center and other areas. Andres shared so many gr...

Today you can listen to insights from airline digital expert, Ismael Monzon. Ismael is a CRO and Analytics Team Lead at Air Europa. Ismael and Air Europa digital team are a playbook case of how to build your digital optimization and CRO program from ground up, step-by-step. This is why, we're really glad that Ismael was willing to share his team's story and the learnings from their journey.   You...

This is a third chat in series of talks with female airline digital leaders. We talked to Eveline Lee, Senior Manager Digital Channel Products, Product Innovation, Payments at Scoot. Eveline started her airline career 10 years ago when she joined Asian low-cost airline Scoot as one of the first team members in their digital team. Since then, Scoot’s digital team has evolved and matured immensely,...

Our today's guest has amazing airline background and experience. Ursula Silling, CEO at Branchspace, was prior Chief Commercial Officer at Kenya Airways, Commercial Director at Air Malta and EVP Commercial at Brussels Airlines, and worked with many other airlines. We talked to Ursula about challenges airlines face with digital transformation and about how to build modern airline digital experience...

We got a great show for you today. I talked to Mariana Fonseca Medina, who is currently VP of Digital at Virgin Voyages. Before joining Virgin, Mariana was Managing Director of Digital Customer Experience at American Airlines and has worked on airline Ancillary Merchandising and Digital Analytics Strategy in the past. We talked about her experience of building digital teams, both large and small,...

Just a quick update from Iztok about the Diggintravel new airline digital research project. A new podcast chat with a special guest coming soon!

After two years of this podcast we go back to the beginning, looking at the big picture and what lies ahead for travel and airline industry. Today's podcast guest, Tino Klaehne, Director of Strategic Innovation and Intelligence at Lufthansa Innovation Hub, explained what he and his team are doing (spoiler alert: a lot of cool, agile and unconventional stuff) to predict what will happen in the futu...

I talked to an experienced digital professional, Matt Ravlich. Matt is currently a Managing Director for Alberta Consulting Group (ACG), where he specializes in optimizing their clients’ digital experiences using the current tools they have and helping them prepare for the future. Prior to that, Matt was Manager of Digital Analytics and Optimization at the second-largest Canadian airline, WestJet...

Iztok and his co-host Henry Harteveldt talked to Jake Maloney, Senior Manager, Ecommerce at Frontier Airlines. We were thrilled to speak with Jake because Frontier Airlines is a digital commerce powerhouse. In its June 2022 quarter, Frontier reported a record $74.96 in ancillary revenue per passenger. Jake shared how Froniter ecommerce team is organized, how they build great digital products like...

Iztok and his co-host Henry Harteveldt talked to Michaela Hermans, Head of Digital Transformation and Innovation at Wizz Air. Michaela shared  a lot of great insights and learning from their digital transformation journey, including: why digital and innovation are enablers for Wizz Air's rapid growth why they are building cross-functional product teams why Wizz Air is not doing digital for the sak...

Iztok and his co-host Henry Harteveldt talked to Mark Hursh, Senior Director of Digital Customer Experience at Southwest Airlines, to learn how they build innovative digital products. Mark shared  a lot of great insights and learning from their journey to build one of the best airline digital teams. ideation - how to get ideas for innovative digital products research and testing - how they do it a...

In the third episode of our Airline Digital Cabin and Retailing series Iztok were Henry joined by Viktorija Kucerova, Senior Consultant for Marketing, Strategy and Sustainability at SITA.   The trio talked about all kinds of airline digital, ecommerce, and onboard retailing concepts: The importance of product development, testing and innovation The importance of making the passenger's journey as u...

In the second episode of our Airline Digital Retailing series, Iztok and Henry talked to airline ecommerce and ancillary expert Lee Barrett.   Lee’s impressive airline career includes roles in Cabin Crew Development and Performance and Development Management at Air New Zealand at its head office in Auckland, Head of Customer Service at JetStar in Tokyo, Director of Ancillary Revenue at Viva Aerobu...

This is the first episode in our new Airline Digital Cabin Talks. It's a new series in which we'll talk about airline digital, ancillary revenue and onboard retail. In the first episode we talked to Emilio Chacon Monsant. Emilio’s background is in ancillary products, digital commerce, and the digital experience at four airlines, including two network carriers – Aeromexico and Avianca – and two low...

Joe Sinclair, Senior Digital Analyst at Air New Zealand, joined the show to talk about how digital analytics team evolved at Air New Zealand. Joe shared many valuable lessons learned by Air New Zealand's airline digital analytics team. He explained how they started from scratch with their digital analytics team, and talked about how the team grew and how they are now working and providing insights...

Greg Dowling, Global Director of Business Insights at Glassbox joined our chat to explain how airline digital pros can really figure out what's going on in their booking funnel.  If you want to increase conversion rate, if you want to improve your digital experience - there is one thing you really need to do. You need to understand your customers, their struggles, and their key digital pain points...

Today, we bring you another great digital expert – Ben Labay, Managing Director at Speero. Speero is a digital optimization agency built by the people who founded the CXL blog , one of the best resources available for conversion optimization and experimentation. Ben is an industry leader, a speaker on all things digital research and experimentation, and a conservation science consultant.   Check o...

In this podcast episode, we'll be very hands-on and practical. I get asked a lot about how to implement website analytics by airline people, and if you want to learn about that too - this episode is for you. Liliana García Magaña, who works on Business Intelligence and Analytics at a Mexican low-cost airline VivaAerobus, explained in detail how they implemented new advanced digital analytics, how...

Today's talk it's all about marketing and innovation. Alberto Terol Conthe, a Head of Customer Experience Design & Development at Iberia, shared his insights on how marketing and innovation are connected. Even more, Alberto shared his framework that connects Design Thinking, Strategic Foresight, and Growth Marketing among other things. Listen to my chat with Alberto to learn about all these things...

Listen to this episode of the Airline Talks series and learn from Ivan Karlovic, Director, Data Analytics at Norwegian. Ivan shared tons of interesting insights and his experience from building a new data team at Norwegian. Here are some highlights from our talk Why and how Norwegian is building an internal data team What kind of data roles are they looking for How is the team organized What are t...

This is the first episode in our Airline Digital Talks series, where airline digital talks will talk about their work. Listen to this episode and learn from Remus Moraru, a digital expert from Wizz Air. Remus talked about data, analytics, experimentation, mobile apps, and how Wizz Air and its digital team are adapting to COVID challenges. You can find the full article with quotes and other notes f...

In today's podcast episode I talked to Emre Güney, Head of Global Marketing, Lifecycle at Skyscanner. I know Emre back from his airline days when he was Head of Digital Product & Growth Marketing at Pegasus Airlines.   Emre talked about customer retention and how to do retention marketing in travel. Especially in airline industry where we suffer from low differentiation, commoditization and low fr...