A few weeks ago, our team headed up to Hamburg for two days of inspiring discussions and networking at Think Future’19. Think Future, also known as Hamburg Aviation Conference, is a premier industry event that centres around innovation in aviation and travel. Industry thought-leaders from airlines, airports, rail and hospitality gathered together to exchange views on the latest trends, ideas and technology developments in the current dynamic environment. Here are a few interesting takeaways this year:
#1 The importance of being a “data-driven” organisation
In today’s increasingly competitive travel marketplace, it is essential that travel retailers ensure their business processes and technology platforms are ‘data-driven’. The most successful retailers will be able to access, visualise and generate insights from vast amounts of data in order to make strategic, tactical and real-time decisions to gain a competitive advantage. Due to the increasingly sophisticated nature of data-driven decisioning (e.g. machine-learning), it is crucial that retailers have platforms that allow them to experiment efficiently: fail/succeed fast, improve, repeat.
#2 Challenge of innovating the airport experience
Airlines and airports are still failing to work together to provide travellers with an engaging and seamless ‘airport’ experience. There still seems to be a lack in common understanding about the gaps in the customer experience leading up to the day-of-travel, and even less collaboration to address these gaps in a mutually beneficial way. Some airports have said that this is partially the result of the numerous technology, operational and regulatory constraints they face as a business. Despite this, there are some good examples of startups and some airlines who have been trying to solve specific problems on their own – e.g. Vueling’s trial facial recognition technology at BCN airport to speed up boarding at the gate, or Grab’s at-airport food ordering app.
#3 Growing adoption of NDC-based distribution
Despite the many NDC naysayers, there are increasing proof points from airlines showing the success of their NDC initiatives. For example, the Lufthansa Group has 100+ third parties, such as agencies and brokers, actively using their API today – alleviating somewhat the fear that these partners would avoid NDC due to the cost of having to integrate with multiple airlines. Modern PSS providers (e.g. IBS, Interes) are bullish about the speed at which they can help airlines introduce new products via their NDC-enabled platforms (e.g. “in minutes”), relative to the legacy PSS providers.
#4 Blockchain – trough of disillusionment?
The fact that blockchain was hardly mentioned during the conference discussions seems to imply that at least perception-wise, blockchain for airlines has fallen sharply off the Peak of Inflated Expectations and into the Trough of Disillusionment. Which we think is a good thing – Enlightenment and Productivity are on their way!
How can Branchspace help your business?
At Branchspace, we empower travel companies to excel in digital retail. Since our founding, we have worked with numerous travel providers, including airlines, to help them build and deliver best-in-class digital transformation programmes and e-commerce retail solutions. By bringing deep industry knowledge and broad business and technical capabilities, our team of technology experts and data scientists can help you transform your digital channels and gain a competitive edge through leveraging cutting-edge technology, data-driven insights and industry best practice. Click here to learn more about our services for airlines.
The average airline web portals is not broken. It loads, it sells tickets. It technically does what it's supposed to do.
And yet, the experience feels tiring.
You notice it when you try to do something simple. Change a seat. Find your gate. Understand what happens if a flight is delayed. Suddenly you are scanning long pages, decoding airline terminology, clicking back and forth just to stay oriented.
The problem is not with the features, It is effort effort required in getting from A to B.
Airline portals still expect travellers to think like systems. To understand menus, categories, fare families, ancillaries, rules. But travellers arrive with something much simpler. Intent.
They want to get something done and get on with their journey.
This article posits that airline web portals should stop behaving like navigation systems and start acting as intent-aware decision environments. When UX is designed to reduce effort, adapt to context, and quietly support travellers at each stage of the journey, portals become calmer to use, easier to trust, and far more effective for airlines.
The basics still matter more than airlines think
Before talking about AI or personalisation, it is worth being honest about the fundamentals.
You can see that accessibility standards aren’t yet being applied and portals aren’t optimised for mobile, which results in performance drops. Navigation feels heavier than it needs to be. Search often works, but only if you already know what to ask and how the airline expects you to ask it.
These are not exciting topics, but they shape everything that comes after. If a portal is slow, confusing, or inaccessible, no amount of intelligence layered on top will fix the experience.
At Branchspace, we see this repeatedly. Airlines want to move faster, personalise more, experiment. But the UX foundation is not always ready to support that ambition.
Where portals lose traveller trust
The biggest UX issues are rarely dramatic, they are subtle and cumulative:
- A vague error message that offers no next step
- A long paragraph that hides the one thing the traveller needs to know
- Three different words for the same concept depending on where you are in the journey
- A mobile page that technically works but feels endless
In isolation these are small instances, but they compound to create friction for a user. And friction erodes confidence.
Travellers begin to hesitate, scan more carefully, and spend extra effort just trying to stay oriented. They stop trusting that the portal will help them when things go wrong. Good UX goes beyond delight, it is about reassurance.
Decision-making is the real job of UX
Every airline portal is a decision-making environment:
- Choose a flight
- Choose a fare
- Choose a seat
- Decide whether to rebook or wait
The role of UX is not to present all options equally. It is to reduce the mental work required to choose well.
That is where simple principles matter more than flashy ideas: clear visual hierarchy, familiar patterns, plain language, and progressive disclosure.
When these are done properly, travellers stop analysing the interface and start moving confidently through it.
This is also where intent-led thinking becomes powerful. When portals are designed around tasks rather than pages, complexity begins to fall away naturally.
What changes when you design for intent
When you stop designing for navigation and start designing for intent, the portal behaves differently:
- Shift the focus to intent and the portal begins to respond in new ways
- Search leads the experience rather than sitting in the background
- Logged-in travellers with an upcoming trip see what they can do next, instead of being asked to explore
This is the direction we have been taking with platforms like Triplake by allowing the portal to respond to context, trip stage, loyalty status and behaviour.
Where AI actually helps and where it should stay quiet
AI has a role in airline UX, but it works best when it stays in the background rather than taking centre stage. The strongest AI-driven experiences are often the ones you barely notice, because the interface feels simpler and the path forward feels clearer.
That might mean routing a traveller straight to the right outcome based on a natural language query, or surfacing the most relevant rebooking option when a disruption occurs. In other moments, it is about removing repetition altogether, using known preferences to spare travellers from making the same choices again and again.
At its best, AI offers clarity, supports decisions without trying to make them on the traveller’s behalf. People still want to feel in control of their journey, they just do not want to work so hard to get there.
The portal is becoming a living interface
The most interesting shift we are seeing has very little to do with technology and everything to do with behaviour. Airline portals are gradually moving away from being static websites and towards adaptive interfaces that respond to where a traveller is in their journey.
Before the trip, the portal helps you prepare. On the day of travel, it shifts into a supportive role, surfacing the information that matters most in the moment. Afterwards, it follows up, closing the loop rather than simply ending the experience.
Making this work demands modular design systems, flexible platforms, and teams that think beyond individual pages and flows. It is not an easy change, but it is both achievable and increasingly necessary.
