Branchspace, a leading travel technology software provider and consultancy working with airlines and other travel companies to enhance and transform their digital retailing capabilities, has appointed David Marock as non-executive Chair as the business positions itself for growth following recent investment.
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in London, Branchspace addresses a growing demand from airlines to create a modern retail offering and meet evolving customer needs for relevant, tailored shopping and self-service experiences. The business allows clients to create and manage personalised, data-driven digital commerce experiences to increase direct distribution and take greater ownership of the end-to-end customer journey.
Branchspace provides solutions across the entire tech stack including solutions architecture, digital performance reviews and UX/UI experience design, alongside a proprietary booking and conversion engine and dynamic retailing software platform, Triplake, which has gained significant traction since launching in 2021.
Marock brings significant expertise and experience working with tech-enabled businesses across a range of CEO, Chair, NED and senior advisory roles. His track record includes almost a decade as CEO at global insurance services and technology business Charles Taylor, tripling the company in size during this time, along with building a sizeable software and technology consulting business from scratch. He currently holds Chair and Board roles at various fast-growing companies, both in the public and private domains; he has been and is also a senior advisor with McKinsey & Company, PE businesses and tech businesses. He has a strong track record driving turn-arounds, scale-ups, transformations and digital innovation in, amongst others, B2B and B2B2C businesses, technology (including SaaS) and advisory businesses worldwide.
The appointment follows a recent investment of £5mn from growth equity investor Gresham House Ventures, which will accelerate the growth of Branchspace’s software offering. Gresham House Ventures also used its talent network to identify Marock as a candidate for the Chair role and secure his services for Branchspace.
Michael Huynh, Founder and Managing Director at Branchspace, said:
“Branchspace is on an exciting growth journey. We are seeing strong demand as airlines have recognised the need to deliver engaging digital experiences which fulfill their customers’ expectations. We are delighted to build on our recent momentum with David’s appointment. David brings an outstanding track record of growing businesses like ours and we believe his expertise will play a vital role over the coming years to fulfil our potential as a leading provider in airline digital transformation.”
David Marock, non-executive Chair at Branchspace, said:
“I have been impressed by the Branchspace team and the innovative software and consulting offerings the business has developed in recent years. At this important time for the airline industry, with passenger numbers continuing to rebound following the pandemic, Branchspace has enormous potential for further growth. With my experience working with other tech-enabled businesses, I am looking forward to supporting Branchspace as it continues to cement its position at the forefront of the sector.”
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.
