At Branchspace, we believe that knowledge fuels progress. As sustainability becomes an ever more pressing issue, it’s crucial to stay informed and embrace ideas that challenge and inspire us to create a greener future. This month, we’ve curated a list of five insightful reads that explore sustainability in the travel and technology sectors, offering actionable insights and innovative solutions. From understanding the environmental impact of cloud computing to examining aviation industry efforts toward net-zero, these resources are a must-read for anyone committed to sustainability.
1. The Lack of Gender Diversity in Travel Technology and Its Impact on Progress
By Maria Sellar, PhocusWire
This article highlights a critical issue in the travel tech space: the scarcity of gender diversity. Maria Sellar explores how the male-dominated nature of this sector is not only holding back innovation but also impacting its potential to adopt more sustainable practices. Read more about how diversity and inclusion can accelerate progress in sustainability and beyond.
Read the full article here.
2. Measuring Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Data Centers: The Environmental Impact of Cloud Computing
Climatiq Blog
Data centers power the digital world, but they also have a significant environmental footprint. This insightful piece breaks down the challenges of measuring greenhouse gas emissions in cloud computing, helping companies understand their digital footprint and take steps to minimize their impact.
Explore the full blog here.
3. Net-Zero Airline Ranking Q2 2024: A Holistic View of Sustainability in Aviation
Sustainable Aero Lab & Research + Attitude
Sustainability in aviation is about more than just cutting emissions. This report provides a comprehensive ranking of airlines’ performance in reaching their net-zero goals, offering valuable insights into how the industry is evolving to embrace a more holistic approach to sustainability.
Read the full report here.
4. The Climate Impact of Aviation Contrails
IATA Report
Contrails are a lesser-known but significant contributor to aviation’s climate impact. This report by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) explains the science behind contrails and their effects on global warming, shedding light on an often-overlooked aspect of aviation sustainability.
Access the report here.
5. Comparing Emissions Estimates: A Methodology Review
IATA Chart of the Week
How do different emissions calculators stack up? This chart compares various methodologies used to estimate emissions, offering a clear, visual representation that can help businesses choose the most accurate tools for their sustainability goals.
View the chart here.
We encourage everyone to explore these resources and join us in driving positive change. Together, we can create a future where sustainability is not just a goal but a fundamental part of how we do business.
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.
