The Diggintravel Podcast

If you are an airline or travel professional this is the show for you! Join our community of more than 4.000 pros to learn about all things digital. Podcast topics: Digital products and UX | Digital innovation | Conversion rate optimization | Ancillary revenue. Join us now to keep up with the challenges of the rapidly changing travel industry. Hosted by Diggintravel founder Iztok Franko, who spent more than 10 years helping travel companies grow their online revenue.

The Diggintravel Podcast is a business podcast hosted by Iztok Franko, with 79 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Iztok Franko hosts The Diggintravel Podcast, a business show with 79 episodes published.

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  Episode #81

  How Airlines and Airports Can Test the Future With Digital Twins

  Sep 24, 202652 min

  In this episode, we launch our new Airline Digital Innovation Series, where we’ll bring new concepts, technologies and ideas to our audience through conversations with people who are developing and applying them across the airline industry. We start with digital twins and my guest Will Bryan, CEO of Autonoma, a company built around data science, simulation and innovation . Before bringing this technology to aviation, Will worked in the high-speed world of autonomous vehicles and driverless racing, including the Indy Autonomous Challenge. Now, he is applying what he learned there to the complex physical world of airline and airport operations. For years at Diggintravel, we’ve talked about experimentation, scientific decision-making and de-risking ideas. Digital twins take those principles beyond websites and digital channels. They give airlines and airports a way to simulate real operations, explore possible scenarios and test decisions before introducing them into the live environment. What if an airport could see the consequences of an operational decision before making it? What if an airline could simulate different responses to a disruption before it happens? And what if experienced teams could safely test ideas that would otherwise be too risky or expensive to try? Put simply, digital twins could allow airlines and airports to see and test the future before it happens. In our conversation, Will explains what digital twins really are, why they are more than attractive 3D visualizations, how they are already being applied in aviation and where this technology could take airlines and airports next. In the following episode, we’ll move from the concept to the practical details and explore what it takes to build a digital twin in the real airline and airport world. RESOURCES: Read the companion article with key digital-twin concepts, aviation use cases and highlights from this episode: https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-twins/

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  Episode #80

  How Airlines Become Data Driven: Does Marketing Actually Drive More Bookings?

  Aug 18, 202619 min

  In the fourth and final episode of the How Airlines Become Data Driven series, we move from analysing relationships to one of the most difficult questions in airline marketing: does marketing actually generate additional demand and bookings? Traditional attribution can show which marketing channel received credit for a conversion. But it cannot necessarily tell us whether that booking happened because of the campaign or whether the customer would have booked anyway. In this episode, I share a practical six-step framework for moving beyond attribution and correlation towards measuring the incremental impact of airline marketing. In this episode, we talk about: Why airline digital teams rarely reach the incrementality stage The difference between attribution, correlation and causation How to define the business outcome or key metric you want to influence Why airline teams need trusted, connected data before attempting advanced measurement How external factors such as capacity, pricing, seasonality and competitor activity can influence results Why clear hypotheses are the starting point for meaningful analysis How existing or deliberately created variability makes marketing impact measurable How correlation, regression analysis and experimentation can help teams test their assumptions How market matching, causal-impact analysis and GeoLift tests can estimate incremental lift Where Marketing Mix Modeling fits into the measurement toolkit Why collaboration between airline marketing teams and data scientists is critical Why marketing leaders must be willing to challenge previous decisions, learn and adjust future investments The episode is accompanied by a companion article featuring a visual six-step framework and five practical examples from airline consulting projects. These examples illustrate how airline teams can explore relationships between advertising and bookings, develop hypotheses, create test periods, compare treatment and control markets, and estimate incremental impact using different data science methods. Explaining all the technical details behind these methods is beyond the scope of one podcast. Instead, the episode focuses on the practical questions airline marketing and analytics teams need to ask, the conditions required for meaningful measurement, and the importance of building a bridge between business experts and data scientists. Whether you are evaluating an individual campaign, questioning the value of paid brand search, measuring the impact of brand advertising, or deciding how to allocate your marketing budget, the central question is the same: did your marketing create additional demand and bookings, or would they have happened anyway? RESOURCES: Read the companion article with the six-step framework, practical airline marketing analytics examples, charts, experiments and key takeaways from this episode: https://diggintravel.com/does-airline-marketing-drive-more-bookings/

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  Episode #78

  How Airlines Become Data Driven: Why Airline Digital Tracking Is Never Perfect

  Jun 25, 202630 min

  In the second episode of the How Airlines Become Data Driven series, we move from the big picture to the first practical step of building a more data-driven airline ecommerce and digital marketing team. In my experience, every airline analytics project starts in the same place: understanding how accurate your digital data really is. Before optimizing campaigns, running experiments, evaluating the impact of digital spend, or making strategic marketing decisions, you need to know whether you can trust the data you're looking at. Drawing on five years of hands-on consulting with airline ecommerce and digital marketing teams, I explain why measuring data accuracy and tracking discrepancies between digital analytics platforms and backend systems should become one of the first habits every airline digital team builds. In this episode, we talk about: Why data accuracy is the foundation of every analytics and optimization project Why many airline teams don't know how accurate their digital analytics data really is How digital measurement has changed with GA4, privacy regulations, consent management, browser restrictions, and server-side tracking Why there is no single "correct" analytics architecture for every airline Why measuring tracking discrepancy is more important than chasing perfect tracking Practical approaches to measuring discrepancies between GA4, server-side tracking, and backend systems Why regular discrepancy tracking should become one of the first habits every airline digital team builds How to investigate discrepancies by segmenting data across countries, devices, browsers, and customer groups A real-world example of identifying a major tracking issue following a GA3 to GA4 migration Whether you use GA4, Adobe Analytics, server-side tracking, or a custom analytics platform, the principles are the same: understand the limitations of your measurement, validate it against a trusted source of truth, and build confidence in your data before making important business decisions. RESOURCES: Full article with practical examples, charts, and key takeaways from this episode: https://diggintravel.com/why-airline-digital-tracking-is-never-perfect/

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  Episode #77

  How Airlines Become Data Driven: What Five Years of Airline Consulting Taught Me About Data

  Jun 11, 202623 min

  After a six-month break, the Diggintravel Podcast is back with the start of a new series: How Airlines Become Data Driven. Over the last five years, alongside hosting more than 70 conversations with airline leaders, digital executives, UX experts, and industry practitioners, I have also spent much of my time working directly with airline ecommerce and digital marketing teams. These projects ranged from helping airlines improve digital measurement and analytics foundations, to building joined views of marketing and ecommerce performance, to more advanced experimentation and data science initiatives designed to better understand what actually drives airline business results. In this first episode of the series, I share some of the biggest lessons and observations from those consulting engagements and explain why becoming data driven is often much harder than it looks. In this episode, we talk about: Why I decided to bring the Diggintravel Podcast back after a six-month break Why this series is a return to Diggintravel's roots in airline ecommerce, analytics, UX, and digital marketing The different types of airlines and digital teams I have worked with over the last five years Why airline size matters less than organizational maturity The three stages of becoming data driven: foundations, insights, and causation Why building a common view of the business is often more important than building another dashboard How constant change, shifting priorities, and organizational complexity make data-driven transformation difficult Why routines, habits, and shared understanding are critical ingredients of data-driven culture Why alignment across marketing, ecommerce, analytics, IT, UX, and leadership often matters more than technology This episode serves as an introduction to the broader How Airlines Become Data Driven series and lays the foundation for the topics we'll explore in future episodes, including measurement, analytics, experimentation, organizational learning, and AI-driven change. If you're involved in airline ecommerce, digital marketing, analytics, data science, or digital transformation, this episode provides a practical perspective on what it really takes to build a more data-driven organization. RESOURCES: Full article with highlights and key takeaways from this episode: https://diggintravel.com/how-airlines-become-data-driven/

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  Episode #76

  Airline Generative Engine Optimization Explained: What Every Aviation Marketer Must Know

  Dec 18, 202552 min

  This episode closes out the 2025 Diggintravel Podcast season with a deep dive into one of the topics that kept coming up in our Airline Leaders Series conversations: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). After a year of interviews with airline CMOs, CDOs, and digital leaders in partnership with 815Labs , we wanted to switch gears and dig into a very specific subject that sits high on many airline agendas and that many of you asked us to explore in more detail. For this episode, I traveled to Budapest to sit down with David Minorics, Business Development Director at Mito Performance . Through Mito’s airline-focused branch 815Labs, David has worked on numerous airline digital marketing and SEO projects and is now leading GEO pilots and initiatives for airlines and other travel brands. In this episode, we talk about: What Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is and how it differs from traditional SEO Why GEO is about being recommended by AI, not just being found How AI-powered search synthesizes information and what query fan-out means in practice The key elements of the GEO playbook for airlines How airlines can benchmark GEO visibility and sentiment What GEO metrics and KPIs actually matter How airline marketing teams can start GEO pilot projects Early learnings from GEO pilots, including projects with airlines This episode is a practical, no-hype conversation about how AI-powered search is changing airline visibility, marketing, and digital strategy. David shares hands-on insights that make this a must-listen for airline marketers, digital teams, and anyone responsible for airline distribution and brand presence. RESOURCES: Full article with highlights and key takeaways from this episode: https://diggintravel.com/airline-generative-engine-optimization/

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