Alaska Airlines Uses Experimentation to Hit $200-300m Target

300M

in incremental annual revenue

70%

of experiments showed positive revenue impact

3X

increase in experiment velocity

How Alaska Airlines runs 100+ experiments annually to drive $300M in revenue. From siloed teams to how they built an experimentation culture with Optimizely

Industry
Travel
Products used
AnalyticsWeb ExperimentationPersonalizationFeature Experimentation

Four years ago, Alaska Airlines' technology teams made decisions in silos — relying on small focus groups and UX studies that weren't directly tied to business outcomes. Today, the airline runs over 100 experiments annually, using Optimizely to hit $200-300 million revenue targets.

Natalie Bowman, VP of Digital Experience at Alaska Airlines, oversees all guest-facing digital touchpoints across websites, mobile apps, and airport experiences — now spanning both Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines following their merger.

The Hawaiian integration introduced global flying for the first time, adding Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand to their network. It also brought backend complexity around payments, currency, and languages. The biggest learning? Personalization isn't just about the messages customers see — it's personalizing the entire booking and payment journey.

The transformation started when Alaska embedded Optimizely Experimentation into their "definition of done" — teams can't launch new features without enabling them for testing. This shifted experimentation from optional to non-negotiable, creating a culture where data drives decisions, and teams get credit for measurable impact.

Merging two airlines — global complexity at scale

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  • Natalie Bowman is VP of Digital Experience at Alaska Airlines, overseeing all guest-facing digital touchpoints — websites, mobile apps, and airport lobby experiences across Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, and their new loyalty program, Aon Most Rewards.
  • The Hawaiian Airlines merger introduced global flying for the first time, adding four new markets: Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand — bringing new currencies, languages, and a global customer base.
  • The biggest learning: They underestimated the backend complexities of payments and currency — personalization isn't just about the messages customers see, it's personalizing the entire booking and payment journey.
  • Currently in the "messy part" of integration, where systems aren't fully aligned, balancing revenue optimization with seamless integration, with completion targeted for April 2026.

When we talk about personalization, it's not just personalising the messages that we put in front of guests. It's personalising their entire booking journey, their entire payments journey.

Natalie Bowman|VP of Digital Experience

How an experimentation transformation broke down silos

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  • Alaska Airlines built technical efficiency first — a single backend that personalizes for every guest based on their airline, loyalty status, and preferences, enabling multiple front-end digital experiences on one platform.
  • Four years ago, Alaska shifted from siloed technology teams making decisions based on small focus groups to a data-driven experimentation culture with Optimizely as a key partner.
  • They created an experimentation team outside the technology group to act as a neutral third party, holding teams accountable to business outcomes rather than gut instinct.
  • The breakthrough came when both teams aligned on shared outcomes — the experimentation team became just as invested in revenue goals as the e-commerce team, eliminating organizational seams.
  • Now experimentation is involved before features are even built, not after — creating true partnership and shared ownership of outcomes.

Experiments helped Alaska hit $200-300M targets

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  • Alaska Airlines operates with a revenue initiative mentality — taking on incremental revenue goals of 10-12% of annual revenue each year, a significant number in the hundreds of millions.
  • Each revenue initiative is broken into smaller initiatives with owners, and every single one is fully tested with Optimizely before getting credit — the experimentation team must validate that it actually drove revenue.
  • Alaska shares publicly that their revenue initiative goals have been $200-300 million each year in incremental revenue, almost all driven purely through digital experiments.
  • As teams worked together, experiment velocity tripled on the website alone, running significantly more experiments each month and driving increased business outcomes.
  • The travel industry hit a rough patch earlier this year with a 3-4 month dry spell where no experiments hit — but they're now back to 70% of experiments showing positive revenue impact in the past three months.

Our revenue initiative goals have been two to $300 million each year. Incremental revenue that we're driving. And almost all of that is purely through digital experiments... we've [even] tripled the number of experiments we are running every month

Natalie Bowman|VP of Digital Experience

Personalization across airlines, brands, and AI innovation

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  • Delivering personalization across multiple airlines, countries, and languages is a daunting task — Alaska is starting with the airline customers who are flying as the key personalization moment.
  • Alaska flyers get Alaska-branded experiences across digital touchpoints and airport lobbies, Hawaiian flyers get Hawaiian branding — balancing both brands while creating seamless experiences.
  • The loyalty program merger created a third brand — Aon Most Rewards — as a new front door that brings both airline customer bases together while maintaining the integrity of each airline's legacy.
  • Alaska innovated early with AI, partnering with OpenAI and Gemini to create natural language search — customers can say "I'd like to take a trip to Paris" instead of filling out multiple form fields, and it's been very successful.
  • For internal efficiency, Alaska believes AI should be the biggest unlock for engineering and product teams, but adoption has to be self-driven — one engineering manager showed how he used Copilot to save five hours a day.

Moving from dashboards to actionable analytics

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  • Alaska Airlines purchased Optimizely Experimentation Analytics to streamline analysis that previously happened outside the platform — incorporating complex business metrics like lifetime value, offline metrics, bag checks, and flight data.
  • Airlines operate on very legacy technology — Alaska uses Sabre, a system that's decades old, making it difficult to get information in and out and limiting flexibility.
  • Having a powerful analytics platform that can help them react quickly to what's happening is critical for an industry built on inflexible legacy systems.
  • The goal is to move from dashboard reporting mode to actionable analytics — making insights seamless and enabling faster decision-making based on what they're learning.

Experimentation in the DNA — Definition of done

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  • After years of modernization and heavy investment, Alaska is excited about moving fast — coming up with ideas, executing quickly, learning what works, and moving to the next thing in a dynamic optimization culture.
  • Onboarding Optimizely isn't simple, but it's absolutely worth the journey — Natalie considers Optimizely one of the top partners in their tech stack.
  • The breakthrough: Alaska embedded experimentation into their "definition of done" — teams can't launch new features without enabling them for experimentation and running experiments.
  • They're now adding feature variables as a requirement so the experimentation team can be more creative once features are live — making experimentation part of the standard process, not dependent on individual team decisions.
  • Success came when digital teams saw the impact, got credit for it, and became more open to the experimentation mindset.
  • Plus, learn what the must-haves are for a long-haul flight in the rapid fire round.

I think of Optimizely as one of the top partners that we have in our tech stack.

Natalie Bowman|VP of Digital Experience

Experimentation as Standard Practice: The Alaska Model

Alaska Airlines didn't just adopt experimentation — they made it non-negotiable. By embedding Optimizely into their "definition of done," they transformed experimentation from an optional add-on to a required step in every feature launch. The result? Over 100 experiments annually driving $200-300 million in incremental revenue, validated by a neutral experimentation team before anyone gets credit.

The shift from siloed tech teams making decisions based on focus groups to a data-driven culture aligned on shared outcomes took four years to build. But the payoff is clear: tripled experiment velocity, 70% of recent tests showing positive revenue impact, and a dynamic optimization culture that moves fast, learns quickly, and iterates constantly.

Now, as they integrate Hawaiian Airlines and expand into global markets with new currencies, languages, and customer segments, that experimentation foundation becomes even more critical. With Optimizely Analytics helping them move from dashboard reporting to actionable insights, and AI powering innovations like natural language search, Alaska Airlines is ready to scale personalization across two airline brands and a new loyalty program.

The lesson? Make experimentation mandatory, align teams on shared revenue outcomes, and let data — not opinions — drive decisions. That's how you hit nine-figure targets, year after year.