The travel booking journey is broken, and it costs us all

20/10/2025

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The Hidden Crisis in Airline E-commerce.

Every second, somewhere in the world, a traveller abandons their flight booking. Not because they changed their mind about traveling, but because the system failed them. The price suddenly jumped. The payment method wasn’t accepted. The checkout process demanded too much information. The mobile experience broke down.

This isn’t just frustrating, it’s catastrophic. Airlines currently experience an 87.8% cart abandonment rate (in the best of cases). That means for every 100 passengers who start booking a flight, only 12 complete the journey. Behind these numbers lie billions in lost revenue, millions of frustrated travellers, and an industry that has somehow normalized dysfunction in its most critical revenue channel.

Recent data reveals that only 11% of leisure travellers and 16% of business travellers complete bookings without frustration, while over half of all travellers abandon bookings due to poor user experience. Meanwhile, 67% of passengers report negative customer service experiences, and 39% cite pricing transparency as their primary concern.

The question isn’t whether the booking journey is broken. It’s why we’ve accepted it for so long.

Working across the industry in different countries has provided a unique vantage point to understand what works in direct channel optimization:

The Fundamental Shift: From Ticket Sales to Digital Retail

When airlines first moved online in the mid-1990s, they simply digitized their existing reservation systems. The mindset remained transactional: sell a ticket, move to the next customer. But the world evolved into sophisticated e-commerce platforms while airlines remained stuck in legacy thinking.

The breakthrough insight. Airlines aren’t in the ticket-selling business, they’re in the digital retail business with multiple sales distribution channels. This shift in perspective changes everything.

Key patterns that emerged.

Payment friction is the silent killer. Airlines lose customers not because of price, but because they don’t accept the payment method the traveller wants to use. This is especially acute for international routes where regional payment preferences vary dramatically.

Mobile optimization isn’t optional. Today, more than 60% flight searches happen on mobile devices, yet many airlines still treat mobile as an afterthought.

Transparency builds trust, opacity destroys it. The industry’s addiction to drip pricing (showing low base fares then adding fees throughout the process) creates immediate distrust, and this uses to affect the payments conversion rate.

Personalization drives conversion. Generic experiences produce generic results. Using customer data platforms (CDPs) and AI-driven personalization, airlines can present relevant offers at the right moment, dramatically improving conversion rates.

The Technology-Strategy Alignment Gap. One of the costliest mistakes observed across the industry is implementing technology without strategy. Airlines invest millions in new booking engines, CDPs, or analytics platforms, then wonder why results disappoint.

The Organizational Barrier Nobody Talks About.

Perhaps the most challenging insight: organization fails. The barrier to successful direct channel optimization isn’t usually technical capability but organizational silos between Commercial, Marketing, IT, and Operations, creates a barrier that makes the companies fail.

Airlines that break through these barriers, create sustainable competitive advantages. Those that don’t remain trapped in internal dysfunction while watching competitors surge ahead.

The NDC Revolution That Wasn’t (Yet)

New Distribution Capability (NDC) promised to revolutionize airline distribution by enabling personalized offers and reducing dependency on costly intermediaries. The reality has been more nuanced. Over 60 airlines are now NDC certified, but adoption varies wildly by market and customer segment.

The lesson: NDC is a capability, not a strategy. It’s a tool that enables better retailing when integrated into a comprehensive distribution strategy that balances direct channels, OTAs, GDS, and emerging platforms.

The Customer-First Revelation

AirAsia’s digital transformation during COVID-19 provides perhaps the clearest lesson: successful transformation starts with asking “How will this enhance customer experience?” not “What technology should we implement?”. By identifying all customer touchpoints and systematically improving the most impactful ones, AirAsia pivoted from merely an airline to a digital lifestyle platform.

Similarly, Singapore Airlines’ comprehensive digital strategy (encompassing mobile app enhancement, data analytics, in-flight connectivity, and staff training with VR) succeeded because every initiative focused on either customer experience or operational efficiency that ultimately benefited customers.

Conclusions: What We Need to Fix and Your Path Forward.

The airline e-commerce crisis isn’t inevitable, it’s a choice. Every abandoned booking represents a failure we can prevent. Here’s what needs to happen, and how you can be part of the solution.

For Airline Leaders: The Strategic Imperatives

Adopt a customer-first digital mindset. Stop thinking about selling tickets and start thinking about creating seamless digital experiences that happen to include flight purchases. This mental shift unlocks entirely different strategic possibilities.
Break organizational silos immediately. Create cross-functional teams with representation from Commercial, Marketing, IT, and Operations, with clear accountability for end-to-end digital journeys. Digital transformation fails when these functions operate independently.
Invest in data infrastructure before features. Analytics, data quality, and customer data platforms provide the foundation for everything else. Without reliable data, personalization becomes guesswork, and optimization becomes random changes.
Prioritize mobile experience ruthlessly. With most searches and increasing bookings happening on mobile, a suboptimal mobile experience directly translates to lost revenue. Mobile-first design isn’t a feature, it’s a requirement.
Embrace payment method diversity. Accepting local payment methods isn’t just nice-to-have, it’s essential for international growth. Every unsupported payment method represents abandoned bookings.
Build trust through transparency. The short-term revenue gains from drip pricing pale compared to the long-term damage to brand trust and conversion rates. Frontload pricing transparency and watch conversion rates improve.

For Industry Professionals: Your Role in the Transformation.

Become data literate. Understanding how to interpret analytics, derive insights from data, and make data-driven decisions has become as fundamental as knowing how to use email. This isn’t optional for modern aviation professionals.
Champion the customer voice. In every meeting, on every project, ask: “How does this improve the customer experience?” This simple question refocuses discussions away from internal convenience toward customer value.
Measure everything, optimize continuously. Establish clear KPIs, track them religiously, and create a culture of continuous experimentation through A/B testing. Play Airlines’ 67% Look-to-Book improvement didn’t happen through one big change, it came from hundreds of small, measured optimizations.
Share insights across the ecosystem. The industry advances when knowledge flows. Participate in industry forums, share learnings, collaborate on standards like NDC. We rise or fall together.

For Travellers: Why Your Voice Matters

Demand better experiences. When booking processes frustrate you, provide feedback. Airlines that ignore customer input lose to those that listen. Recent data shows 57% of travellers would “definitely” book directly if airlines improved the experience.
Vote with your wallet. Support airlines that offer transparent pricing, smooth booking processes, and excellent customer service. Market signals drive change faster than anything else.
Participate in research. When airlines seek feedback through surveys or user testing, contribute your perspective. Your insights help shape the experiences of millions of future travellers.

The Opportunity Ahead.

McKinsey projects that airline retailing could generate an additional $40 billion in revenue by 2030 (a 4% increase in industry revenues). This isn’t just about airlines capturing more value, it’s about creating genuinely better experiences that make travel easier, less stressful, and more enjoyable.

The technology exists. The strategies are proven. The business case is compelling. What’s needed now is the collective will to prioritize customer experience over organizational inertia, to invest in infrastructure over quick fixes, and to measure success by conversion rates and customer satisfaction rather than just ticket sales.

The question isn’t whether we can fix airline e-commerce. The question is: will we?

Your participation in discussions, your willingness to share insights, and your commitment to elevating industry standards all contribute to building the future of travel commerce, one where booking a flight is as seamless as it should be.

Together, we can transform frustration into delight, abandoned carts into completed bookings, and a broken system into an industry benchmark for digital excellence.

If you need help facing digital challenges in the consumer industry, at Consumer Services Hub we are ready to support you. We have extensive experience in optimizing digital channels and business transformation based on data and technology, especially in sectors such as airlines, financial services, and hospitality. Together, we can turn obstacles into opportunities to grow and improve your customers’ experience.

BIBLIOGRAPHY – Data Sources Used in Article:

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