"Technology in this industry is key": A talk with Lourdes Losada, Director & Site Lead Americas, Skyscanner
"AI is just one more tool," affirmed Lourdes Losada (Skyscanner) at ALTA AGM & Airline Leaders Forum. The executive noted that technology is "key" to breaking down data silos and highlighted traveler trust: 51% use the "Everywhere" search.
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Artificial intelligence has dominated the recent conversation in the airline industry, but for Lourdes Losada, Director and Site Lead Americas at Skyscanner, it is fundamental to put it in perspective: AI is "just one more tool." Ads
In her first appearance at the ALTA Airline Leaders Forum, Losada analyzed the "key" role technology plays in unifying an industry still fragmented by data silos. From agility in decision-making to managing traveler trust—reflected in the 51% of users who use the "Everywhere" search—the Skyscanner executive broke down the real challenges and opportunities beyond the AI revolution.
Pablo Diaz: Let's talk a bit about Skyscanner. First, what did you think of the forum? Is this your first time participating in ALTA?
Lourdes Losada: First time participating in ALTA, yes. Honestly, it was very good. We are delighted. I'm leaving happy because, first of all, the caliber of the people who attend. It's a different level, a different profile. And then also, all the discussion topics, which go beyond the usual.
Pablo Diaz: This year's focus clearly shifted from SAF to AI. Beyond the specific wave of AI, do you think this "revolution" and putting AI at the center of the debate gives more visibility to the relevance of technology in the airline industry?
Lourdes Losada: Technology in this industry is actually key. And we love to say, or I love it, when people say: "No, it's just that airlines, everything is super..." In reality, they are super digitized and all, but there is a lot of work to do. There is a lot of data flying around, there's like a tango between data, even within the same companies. And between the same departments of the same companies, which don't communicate with each other. And at Skyscanner, for example, we see this day in and day out.
And in the end, it falls to us to be those mediators: "Can you please talk, distribution with marketing, with revenue?" There's a lot of that part where it's also important for us to show them: "Look, we have all this data. You have all this data. We have the passengers and those who want to travel, and you have the means to make it happen. How can we make sense of all this?" And in the end, AI is nothing more than one more tool. And it's a tool that's here to stay. It's like the internet when it started.
Pablo Diaz: From my experience, I think what we know today as AI is not very different from what we knew before.
Lourdes Losada: No, LLMs have been around for 20 years.
Pablo Diaz: It seems to me that the main advantage, besides handling unstructured data, is being able to ask in natural language, something that used to require SQL or PowerShell. It's more a matter of accessing information that already exists than new information, right?
Lourdes Losada: Totally.
Pablo Diaz: In terms of revenue management, which has existed since the 80s, what does AI bring today that hasn't already been modeled or perfected in recent decades?
Lourdes Losada: Yes, I think there's really no revolution there. There can't be any revolution, because in the end, we're hearing in all the forums and in every meeting we're in that the margins are small, that you have to watch every cent. This is a fairly traditional and old-school industry. In the end, it's also due to the investors' pockets. If you've been doing something for 20 years and right now you're discovering you've been doing it wrong... It seems to me that's no discovery.
But I don't think that's happening either, because I don't think airlines are... or that they haven't been paying that attention to detail. I think they have. What's happening is that now, with the technology available, it's so easy to ask and know where it is, whereas before you needed to ask eight departments for 20 days to get a report to tell you, for example, if there was a 5% increase in, in my case, for example, which I see a lot.
A 5% increase in searches to a certain airport can give us visibility of: "Okay, we can get a little more revenue here." Or, for example: "Look, all these airlines or this flight...". We were saying earlier that... I don't remember who it was exactly... I think it was Adrián [Neuhauser]. That he had been in New York and the ticket price hadn't changed at all since the 60s. Exactly, since the 60s. What happens? We do see many micro-changes every day and, imagine, at Skyscanner, 100 billion searches per day. That's a lot of prices. We do see that. Airlines can see that too. In reality, we also have that data available, available to our clients.
But making decisions and knowing which ones to make at the right time, for me, what AI gives you is the speed to make a decision that used to take you 7 months because there were too many... An engineer to make a report, but still. Last year. It wasn't that long ago. Or I, for example, have worked a lot with Tableau. And with SQL, a lot. If you see, now there are companies that make it much easier to query the data, because before, to use Tableau, you had to take your mini-course, which isn't that easy either to set everything up behind the scenes, you need your engineering. If we have one thing, it's engineers, who represent more than 70% of the company's staff. But it's that, it's the... commercial part... the natural language part.
Pablo Diaz: Before, changing an optimized query meant changing thousands of lines of code. Today, it's just refining the question and asking again.
Lourdes Losada: Totally. And also having access to unlimited knowledge. In a certain sense, right? For example, a company that... you have to have the local part too, but a company that has never been in a certain market and doesn't have that access, maybe an SME, a smaller company, someone starting, a tech company, that doesn't have access to: "I don't know how taxes work in Peru." "Or in Brazil, or whatever." It's that information of: "Act as if you were my board advisor...". And that information is what we have now, what AI primarily brings.
Pablo Diaz: That's where the risks begin, right? A bit like Big Data, which also introduced the risk of having too much data.
Lourdes Losada: Yes, and sometimes too much data, and I think we all fall into this. I don't think there's any company that doesn't fall into this, because sometimes, too much data slows down growth. For example, our growth has always been organic. Almost always organic. It's only very recently that we've started doing our own advertising or investing in marketing in markets like Canada or Australia, as test markets. But our growth has been organic. Do you know the amount of A/B testing we do? For everything. Everything is an A/B test, everything is an A/B test, but not just for advertising, but for creating a product. We don't create anything without it being absolutely tested and without it causing any disruption to the user's... to what we call the journey.
Because Skyscanner is always "traveler first, partner second, Skyscanner third." Sometimes I say we're like a non-profit: that's also where our key lies. What happens is that sometimes, on the path of wanting to collect just one more bit of data, because suddenly you have a data point that doesn't fit, "Oh, let's do a little more, let's see another A/B test...". And there you stay, you lose time and sometimes... For me, agility, especially in a market like this in the Americas, I don't care if you're in Canada or Argentina; sometimes making decisions in the moment is fundamental to accelerating growth. And when you get stuck in another A/B test, another A/B test, you lose a lot... a lot of agility, and I think that happens in all airlines too.
Pablo Diaz: Yes, sometimes you were fine with a 9.5 out of 10 answer, but you lost opportunities looking for that extra 0.5.
Lourdes Losada: Absolutely. And that happens in all areas, even with leading teams, right? A lot of people get stuck on: "No, I want everyone to do it exactly as I would, etc." No, as long as they do it 65 or 70% as well as you would, let them go. Because that way you can grow, and others coming up behind can grow too. Pablo Diaz: Yesterday on the panel, there was talk of personalization and the multi-channel experience. The passenger no longer wants to go to one site for the flight, another for the hotel, and another for the car; they want one site to resolve the entire query. How much does offering all of that complicate things for you?
Lourdes Losada: Well, for us it's intrinsic, right? Because in the end, what we want is to solve... our motto is to be the number one travel ally. That is, to make it so the person who says, "No, I want to go on vacation," or "I want to leave because I need to travel from one place to another," gets everything. And to make it easy, and not only that, for them to have the confidence and security, that trust, that what they find on Skyscanner is the best price, the most relevant, and has everything in one place.
Three factors are fundamental for me in that part, right? One, speed. The velocity. Getting in and not waiting around. Number two, the prices are what they are. That is, price accuracy. For us, for example, that is fundamental. Because if a user enters Skyscanner and then buys on another site—because we don't sell anything, we are just that channel—and the price shoots up or isn't what the user, the traveler, expected, that's a problem for us.
Pablo Diaz: But don't you run the risk that at some point the customer will cut out the middleman?
Lourdes Losada: Of course, because they will lose trust in Skyscanner. So we ask them, every time they return to the page: "How did it go? Was it good or not good? Was the price accurate, yes or no?" Besides, we are also checking it all the time to ensure it. And we are always with our partners, airlines, OTAs, whoever, always, always, always, always telling them: "Okay, you have a 5% discrepancy here, or this here, or that here...". We have a ton of points that tell us if they are doing well or not. We give them warnings: "Hey, you have an opportunity to improve for your users." Many times we have removed partners from our... so they can improve too. And later, they continue and continue stronger, once we've told them: "Okay, you have to improve this, this, and this."
And besides, speed, price accuracy, and then coverage. Having the full picture. I was talking about that yesterday: every airline has 80 basic economies, economy, basic... all of them. Right now we're seeing the same thing, the person from Lufthansa was talking about how the same thing is coming out for the business side. The traveler wants to know if they have a bag, if they can have a seat, what they have to buy, what extra they have to add. And suddenly, there are travelers in certain countries who care more about one thing than another. For example, the Brazilian traveler: 40% want to buy insurance. The French, only 17% will buy insurance.
The Indian and the Australian are willing to pay for a better meal on the flight. The Spaniard is not, for example, right? Or access to business or the lounge, all those things. They are so intrinsic to each thing, but we have the duty to show them in one place: "Okay, you have this..." and show them and inspire them. Because there was another part, I don't know if you caught this, but 51% of travelers who come to Skyscanner, many don't know where they want to go and use our "everywhere search" filter.
Pablo Diaz: And that requires absolute trust in what you offer through your partners.
Lourdes Losada: Correct. It's enormous, and it has 160 million users per month. Imagine, half of those users who often come and say: "I have a weekend... where can I go, Skyscanner?". And for us, it is, first of all, a giant responsibility to say: "Okay, do you want to stay domestic? Do you want to stay in the country or do you have a little more time and want to go somewhere else?" In Europe's case, the distances are a bit shorter, but you can go international.
And that part is fundamental for us, because it's also a lot of data we get from there. And we also give a platform to the DMOs, that is, the Destination Marketing Officers, and also to the airlines to say: "Look, these people don't know where they want to go. And you have a new route or you have a... Let's show them where they are and where they are buying."
Pablo Diaz: It's fascinating because it inverts the burden of the decision: the passenger trusts you to tell them where to go. But, on the other hand, if something fails with the service provider, Skyscanner is the one who faces the music and bears the burden of the bad experience, right?
Lourdes Losada: Yes. Of course. I'm the one failing, too. Absolutely. And even though we don't have a direct sales team, we do have a 24/7 team, meaning it's available in all countries and languages, which is dedicated to User Satisfaction. There's a passenger who gets stranded, or someone who bought a ticket on another site and it didn't go as planned. We collect those experiences, which are sometimes even super positive messages like: "Skyscanner, thank you so much, you helped me get to such-and-such on time."
But sometimes it's also: "Look, I saw this on Skyscanner, I bought this on Skyscanner and..." "I bought this on Skyscanner and it turns out this flight wasn't departing or whatever." We didn't sell it, but it's our responsibility to also tell them: "Okay, give me all the information, because if this happened to you, I need to know who that partner was that sold it, because I don't want that partner engaging in those practices." "Maybe they made a mistake, maybe it's an error...". Sometimes, they are user errors. Where they know they didn't buy it right, or whatever. But many times, there are also unintentional malpractices. So, we're going to understand and see what these other partners can also do to do better. And that way, we all win.
Pablo Diaz: Is there anything else I haven't asked you that you'd like to add?
Lourdes Losada: Well, for me it's super... super relevant, especially in the Americas, that, for example, this Horizons and Travel Trends report, we had always launched it only in Europe and Asia, and sometimes just at a little event here or there. But this year we held an event in Brazil, an event in Mexico, an event in Canada, and in the United States. So, for us, it's like this huge growth we've had, and especially for the Latam region, doing it in Mexico, which I led myself, or in Brazil, is huge.
Pablo Diaz: To finish, a question I ask everyone: a book, a movie, and a song.
Lourdes Losada: The book I'm currently reading, "El loco de Dios" [El loco de Dios en el fin del mundo, Javier Cercas]. It's very interesting. A friend of mine recommended it, and I'm really enjoying it. Next, a movie... This is one of my favorite movies in the world, it's "Grease". I think it's the reason I ended up in the United States. I saw it when I was super little, the original with John Travolta. I had a crush on John Travolta when I was little. This is very weird, what I'm telling you, but yes, I loved “Grease”.
And a song, I'll go with "Plaza Garibaldi" by Ismael Serrano. It talks about Mexico and I actually presented Travel Trends in Mexico talking about that song, because I discovered Mexico years before I ever went, when I was a teenager, from that song.
So I understood, when I was in Mexico for the first time, I asked: "Please, take me to Insurgentes to see what Insurgentes would be like without taxis," which is because Plaza Garibaldi talks about a... a mariachi who falls in love with a very posh/preppy girl from Madrid.
And when the girl leaves, well, the young woman... it says the mariachi is left like "Insurgentes without taxis, like the Tenampa in silence... confused like the Zócalo." So, for me it was like... So I was: "Take me to all these places." And I loved it.
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