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Travel companies have revealed setting up labs, hackathons and giving staff their own time to innovate were key to transforming their organisations.
Speaking at the Digital Travel Summit on a panel entitled “What does it take to transform your business into a fully agile digital enterprise?” Alan Coates, head, planning and delivery at Ryanair, said: “Three years ago we launched Ryanair Labs. We then saw IT not as a cost centre, but as revenue. The labs focus on investing in revenue opportunities, not cutting costs."
However, he admitted that this direction had not always been the case. "We did come from being cost conscious," Coates said. "One and a half years ago we threw away everything, and started from scratch. Now we’re happy with where we are; we have a mechanism where we can react quite fast.
"We also have the chief executive’s backing. [Michael] O’Leary is not the most technical person in the world, but when he says do it, you do it."
Ryanair Labs also sees the airline regularly invite developers that use the the open-source programming language Couchbase to take part in hackathons. Coates also revealed he does not plan more than six to eight weeks in advance, in order to remain agile.
"We launched our website in 2000, and now realise owning customer is good, and we’re giving the complete travel experience, not just flights," he added. His comments also reflect the airline’s announcement last year that it intended to become the "Amazon of travel", and more recently it has added new feeder flights to its website, as well as hotel booking platforms.
Meanwhile, Pernilla Edelsvard, head of digital at SAS: said “Our airline is 70 years old, [so] it’s too early to fully digitise,” she admitted. "But we do have the SAS Lab, while our airline crew have iPads, so we’re trying to empower staff, to help them become agile.”
And Gurmej Bahia, senior director, digital ecommerce and acquisition at Hilton, added: "Innovation can come from anyone, anywhere. Someone in accounts, in a hotel, it’s important they can be empowered.”
Jon Lord, commercial director, UK at Criteo, said that all of the company’s 2,700 staff were allowed to dedicate 10% time of their own to time spend on innovating, with employees also able to join other colleagues to form teams. “Every year we also run a hackathon for those teams, and the winner will get their product developed.”
