Highlights from Leap into Travel.

On June 22nd, product leaders from the travel industry tuned in to Quantum LEAP into Travel conference, a one-day summit for digital product leaders. And we’re happy to report that Quantum Metric’s first travel-focused conference was a smashing success. 

Industry leaders from airlines, hotels, OTAs, casinos, car rentals, and entertainment & amusement venues met to learn more about the art of Continuous Product Design from Quantum Metric CEO Mario Ciabarra, as well as executives from Virgin Group, Alaska Airlines, Google, Marriott, Sun Country Airlines, Seera Group, and Emirates.

Here’s a look at what happened at Leap into Travel 2021. 

Why should Travelers love you? 

In his keynote, Alex Hunter, former Head of Online Marketing for Virgin Group and founder of Attache, spoke about the secret to getting customers to love your brand. The most important lesson? Delivering a standout experience will foster customer loyalty.

Touchless experiences are the future of travel.

Charu Jain, SVP Merchandising & Innovation at Alaska Airlines met with Mariana Fonseca Medina, VP of eCommerce at Virgin Voyages, and Ravi Simhambhatia, MD/CTO of Customer Experience for Transportation at Google, to speak about shaping the future of travel with touchless experiences.

Covid has changed customer expectations, and now digital plays a new role in making experiences frictionless, from booking, to check-in at the airport, to finally inflight. The three panelists spoke about how digital can streamline the end-to-end traveler experience. 

Digital strategy in leisure vs. business.

David Thompson, CTO at Amex Global Business Travel, spoke with Jason Dahlin, VP of Digital Commerce Products at Marriott and Colton Snow, Senior Director of Product at Sun Country Airlines, about the different strategies in leisure vs. business travel.

With leisure travel bouncing back faster than business travelers, airlines have been forced to pivot their strategies. In the conversation, they spoke about how they adjust strategies for the different customer segments. 

Testing and optimizing the online customer journey.

Ronnie Varghesse, VP Digital Product at Seera Group and Adnan Chaudhry, Head of Marketing and Analytics at Emirates, met with Quantum Metric’s Elisa Richey to speak about the evolving route of the digital traveller journey. 

They explored topics such as how to test and optimize the online customer journey as traveller requirements and expectations evolve. Important topics including how teams can leverage cross-team data alignment to drive decision making in digital product development.