Future Travel Experience brought together industry leaders, innovators, and stakeholders once again in Dublin. Branchspace had the pleasure of joining insightful panel discussions and contributing to a presentation with British Airways.
The event keeps its reputation as a top-notch gathering of innovative technologies and transformative trends on track to reshape the travel industry. From the integration of digital identity to airline retailing strategies, here’s a recap of our participation in this year’s FTE that took place on June 11-13.
Presentation: Fully Integrated Digital Identity Travel with Branchspace and British Airways
Most of us now use biometrics on a daily basis. We start from the moment we wake up to check any notifications to then each time we need to log in to any app. We’re used to having it for any online shopping experience, so travel should adopt the same process. That’s why Branchspace and British Airways joined to create a fully integrated digital identity travel experience.
Here are some of the key topics discussed:
- Increasing adoption of biometrics for phone access, reaching 80% of total users.
- Digital wallets are becoming more mainstream, with a high adoption rate expected among shoppers. Set to reach 5.3 billion people in 2026.
- Apps for ordering taxis reduce stress by providing real-time tracking and information.
- Banking processes have moved online, with improvements in user experience making transactions more seamless.
- The vision of a seamless travel experience through digital identity and biometric technologies, reducing waiting times and improving overall efficiency.
- Presentation of a proof of concept showing how digital identity and biometrics can streamline the air travel process from check-in to boarding and immigration.
- The challenges of implementing digital identity systems, including the need for cooperation among different entities.
- Importance of customer comfort and data security in adopting these new technologies.
Watch or Listen on Spotify.
Panel Discussion: How Digital Identity is changing the way we travel
This panel discussion includes different perspectives on how digital identity is changing the way we travel and how to implement it. Digital identity is surely an essential part of modern retailing and customer-centric travel experiences. There’s a general optimism about its rapid adoption, but also the awareness that it requires an industry-wide collaboration and standardisation.
Here are some of the key topics discussed:
- The implementation of digital identity in airports like Menorca. The project started with a Proof of Concept for biometric services at boarding gates and security lines.
- The simplicity of the technology behind digital identity. Selective consent allows sharing specific information as needed for different use cases, enhancing privacy and security.
- Advantages for airlines, such as eliminating errors from manually entered passport data, reducing operational complexity, and improving customer experience.
- Potential revenue benefits from improved passenger experience, as relaxed travellers are more likely to spend money at the airport.
- Digital identity can significantly reduce processing times and enhance the experience for airport employees and stakeholders as well.
Panelists:
- Vanessa Calvo, Head of Funding and Innovation Trends department at Aena
- Bill Carleton, Director, Advanced Recognition Systems at NEC Corporation of America
- Harvey Tate, Human API — Digital Transformation, IAG
- Ursula Silling, CEO of Branchspace
Moderated by Andrew Price, Managing Director at Opermium.
Watch or Listen on Spotify.
Panel Discussion: Transformational Airline Retailing Strategies
The transformation of the airline industry through digital strategies is gaining more momentum than ever. This panel discussion raises important questions to some of the best airline examples like LATAM, Lufthansa Group and AirAsia. From the importance of flexibility, especially with the impact of natural disasters, to putting customers at the forefront of their digital strategies, these airlines are surely bringing digital transformation forward.
Here are some of the key topics discussed:
- Digital transformation enables airlines to respond quickly to changes and challenges, significantly impacting customer experience.
- Thorough planning combined with agile development allows airlines to manage uncertainty and adapt to evolving needs.
- Transforming organisational culture and processes is as crucial as updating technology.
- Leveraging digital tools to enhance personalisation and engagement is vital for improving customer satisfaction.
- A flexible digital infrastructure enables airlines to explore new business models and revenue streams.
Panelists:
- Ricard Vila, CDO of LATAM
- Keith Martin, Senior Strategy Manager at Lufthansa Group
- Wong Mei Hong, Head of Ancillary Revenue at AirAsia
- Ursula Silling, CEO of Branchspace
Moderated by Eric Leopold, Founder of Threedot.
Watch or Listen on Spotify.
It was a great opportunity to meet with great innovation leaders and airline professionals who also want to drive the industry forward. We hope to meet you next year.
Check where you can meet us next.
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.
