Elevating Virgin Atlantic’s guest journey with a reimagined digital experience
With Deloitte’s expertise in designing and delivering mobile apps, we’ve created a faster, simpler, and smarter experience for our guests. Bringing this vision to life in just nine months is an impressive achievement – a testament to the resilience, dedication, and ingenuity of the teams involved. This milestone reflects our commitment to delivering digital experiences that are intuitive, thoughtful, and unmistakably Virgin Atlantic.
Bethan Lynch, Vice President Customer Journeys, Virgin Atlantic
Everyone dreams of seamless air travel, from booking tickets, to boarding the plane, to making memories. Imagine enjoying a journey that is not only smooth, effortless, and personalised, but supported by an intuitive digital companion.
Virgin Atlantic is renowned for setting new benchmarks, transforming travel and leading guest experiences. Having embarked on an ambitious journey to redefine their digital footprint, they set a vision to create "the world of Virgin Atlantic in your pocket"1 – launching a brand-new, native mobile app for iOS and Android.
Seeking to reimagine their digital journey, they turned to Deloitte to help bring this bold ambition to life. Combining business transformation and design expertise, Virgin Atlantic didn't just want an app, but a world-class digital experience, aligned to their mission of being "the world's most loved travel company" and a premium, long-distance international airline2.
Together we redefined the future experience, enhancing existing functionality, enabling new capabilities including personalisation, and integrating their AI-driven Concierge into a mobile app environment. Ultimately, creating a new home for their Flying Club and a “personal travel companion”3 for all their guests.
1 The many ways Virgin Atlantic is elevating your premium
travel experience | Virgin
Soaring beyond expectations
To deliver a distinct digital product, we’ve looked beyond the horizon, leveraging our industry expertise to take inspiration from retail, wellness, and entertainment. On our journey to deliver the new app, we’ve:
- Come together as one team with Virgin Atlantic, taking a collaborative, design-led approach to swiftly define the app strategy and bring it to life through design labs. Co-creating in this way allowed for rapid prototyping to refine the core functionalities, helping to fast-track delivery and develop a solution that is robust, innovative, and unmistakeably Virgin Atlantic from start to finish.
- Built and future-proofed the app's analytics capabilities, developing an end-to-end data infrastructure. This game-changing initiative unlocked app-first customer insights, enabling the airline to ask the right questions, and make truly data-driven decisions about the app’s future roadmap. Analytics informed the app’s successful launch strategy and empowered their teams to have more effective, insight-backed conversations with leadership and develop a laser focus on what is most impactful.
- Embedded accessibility from the outset, in line with their aim to be the 'world's most inclusive airline'. We’ve ensured the app leverages native accessible features, aligning the digital experience with Virgin Atlantic's commitment to guests with diverse needs.
Drawing on our ecosystem, we’re also harnessing the power of our alliance partners to deliver maximum value and pioneer new technologies:
- Collaborating with Adobe, we're providing seamless integration between the app's front-end and Virgin Atlantic's marketing technology solutions including Adobe Experience Manager for content, Adobe Experience Platform for real-time customer data, and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics for insights and journey orchestration.
- We’re playing a pivotal role in bringing new experiences to the table with Apple, harnessing the latest in design best practice and utilising new iOS features and a Liquid Glass interface. Together, we’re pushing the boundaries of mobile innovation for airlines.
- We’ve also teamed up with Airship to make sure our guests stay effortlessly connected. From operational updates to boarding passes and trip notifications, the app delivers the information you need, when you need it. In a world where travel disruptions can happen, timely and reliable communication isn’t just important – it’s essential. Airship's platform helped us reduce time to market, enabling new features and digital experiences to reach guests more quickly.
"Our strategic alliances with Adobe, Apple, and Airship have been truly pivotal to the success of the app launch. Together we’ve effectively integrated advanced technologies - from real-time customer insights and the latest iOS features to important, timely passenger communications – ultimately delivering enhanced value and innovation for Virgin Atlantic."
Andy Bourne, Lead Engagement Partner, Deloitte
Deloitte Digital have operated as a genuine extension of our team at Virgin Atlantic, combining mobile expertise with the flexibility and pace we needed. It’s been a true partnership in delivery - playing a key role in launching our next-generation mobile experience for our guests and laying the foundations for the future.
Neil Letchford, Vice President Digital Engineering, Virgin Atlantic
Taking the guest experience to new heights
Virgin Atlantic is building the digital foundation for a new era of guest experience. To get there we’re supporting their digital transformation journey, operating in a rigorous, data-driven culture, and elevating their ambition to be the world's most loved and most accessible airline4.
The new app, ranked #1 in travel in the iOS app store in the first week post-launch, is the first step to making guest travel effortless - bringing everything together in one place. Search and book flights, select your seat and meals, check in, and keep your boarding pass just a tap away. While passport scanning technology allows for details to be added faster. Plus, live notifications deliver instant updates when it matters most, so guests are always in the loop – whether at home, heading to the airport, or already on the move.5
We’re also shaping how the existing Virgin Atlantic Concierge will seamlessly integrate into the app for guests. The airline’s AI-powered travel companion ensures the experience feels intuitive, customer-centric, and effortless at every step of the journey. The Concierge offers personalised, 24/7 support, providing assistance with trip details, account and mid-travel queries - delivering a personalised, responsive, and connected experience.
When it comes to taking travel to the next level, Virgin Atlantic isn’t stopping here. By building native search and book functionality, they aim to create a one-stop hub for guests to manage their entire holiday. Looking ahead, Virgin Atlantic Holidays bookings will be natively integrated in a future update, bringing flights and holiday travel together in one seamless platform.
