What problem were you originally trying to solve when you built BoardingArea, and how has that mission changed as travel and travellers have evolved?

The original challenge was creating an environment for travellers where the signal-to-noise ratio was closer. I founded the world’s largest community for frequent flyers—FlyerTalk.com—and noticed that in a typical bulletin-board-style thread, the signal (the information) was at times lost by noise (sense of community). While not a bad thing, it presented challenges for those trying to filter out information for their own use, especially with the change to user adoption of mobile devices, where every pixel matters and doomscrolling is not considered a feature. Combine that with the concept of Google—how to find relevant information in a growing world of TMI (too much information). Thus came about BoardingArea.com, where the signal-to-noise ratio was compressed as a blog post authored by authentic frequent flyers, and the challenge of TMI was to curate the best of the best content creators in the space (we being a Google for frequent flyers). #problem_solved

BoardingArea sits at the intersection of journalism, loyalty, and creator media — how do you define what you are today?

Happily still stuck at that same intersection. Literally, it is a stop sign for us; the only true distraction is this loose fascination with what #creator_media is. Each blog on BoardingArea functions independently, with the core of authentic journalism that comes from hundreds, if not millions, of actual miles flown and thousands of hotel nights slept. And the topic has not strayed from its roots in all these years—still the best source for information of, by, and for business travellers and the frequent flyer. The intersection has suited us well, and there has never been any reason to chase other topics. Bottom line for us has been to remain narrow and deep.

With trust being everything in travel recommendations, how do you balance commercial partnerships with editorial integrity?

Long considered the proverbial church vs. state scenario, the fact is that the bloggers of BoardingArea started well before the current rage of MFA (made for advertising) became a part of identity for the creator media. Trust for our bloggers starts with their consistency. Of the original dozen bloggers that formed at the launch of BoardingArea in 2008, ten of them are still on the platform and still blogging. That's a lot of consistency considering we've published nearly 350,000 blog posts over these years. Next is the personal experience that forms trust. Our bloggers report on what they see, hear, and touch as travellers themselves. They don't orient their writing from press releases. For any commercial partnerships, they are as transparent as they are authentic, with each blogger posting notice of any such relationships before the content itself. And the real guiding light for this trust—most of our bloggers have real day jobs, and they write from their passion and interest—not for trying to find another side hustle.

What major shifts in traveller behaviour have surprised you most over the past few years, and how has BoardingArea adapted its content as a result?

Here are five areas of change that we’ve identified:
  • Content that is co-authored with comments. The absolutely wonderful thing about traveller behaviour is that they are passionate, both in their search for information and their opinion of that information. The past few years have experienced a rise in comment engagement, which, by the structure of blogs, separates signal from noise, yet provides both. The degree to which readers have become part of the conversation is very interesting—Reddit-like, but more focused.
  • Social listening. The extreme growth of social teams within travel entities (United Airlines, British Airways, Marriott Hotels) has truly flipped the script of where customer service is performed. Originally, all these organizations insisted that travellers come to them for service resolution. Today, almost 100% of service resolution happens on the mobile device of the customer via a social identity.
  • Diversified engagement. Traditional tourism, while not completely dead, is certainly being redefined by the use of agentic agents, which are acting like proactive, intelligent personal concierges.
  • Refining traveller experiences. Similar in some respects to Diversified engagement, newer technologies have allowed travel providers to reduce much of the friction in travel and add value. Examples of this are digital hotel keys and app-based check-in, in which the friction of waiting in lobby lines, paperwork, and room-key issues have suddenly disappeared. Another example is smart award-search engines with availability alerts. The friction of manually searching for frequent flyer awards is now a still-close distant past, but numerous players have emerged to simplify the search via multiple partners and multiple loyalty currencies. This is a y-u-g-e win for the traveler. #friction_removed
  • Owning their own economics. Today’s travellers use tools, knowledge, and strategy to reduce friction and extract maximum value (thus the economics), similar to what they do with their own financial portfolio. In our space, they use loyalty value instead of “letting frequent flyer miles happen to them.” Examples are shifting programs when devaluations hit and transferring miles and points for awards strategically.
As for the question about adapting to these shifts—that is the easiest part of what we do. Our bloggers are that shift. As authentic frequent flyers, they are the behaviour described and are writing about it in real time, which means we haven’t had to shift our focus.

If we fast-forward five years, what does success look like for BoardingArea — and what will have changed most about the platform?

Five years is an awfully long time in any business cycle, especially in an age when some of the latest technologies have and will have their greatest impact—AI. But this is when we're at our best, as we've looked at the roadmap of scrolls and clicks and feel comfortable that we play well in the sandbox. Early on in the current five-year fast-forward, we determined the tools, the future, and the investments we can make right now to continue to be a player. We'll have launched the first frequent flyer chatbot. We'll expand our array of brands to include content solely created using AI with human context (we have a team called curAItors, which oversee all content created with synthetic means).

The point is that we will still be within our lane of creating content of value, use, and authority for the frequent flyer and will have adapted to using the newer technologies and methods by which travellers use information. Perhaps the most significant change will be that I likely won't be part of that future. I've come to realise that the company doesn't need me any longer—difficult for most entrepreneurs to get to, but not myself. I've been lucky enough to have built a team that has no turnover, a portfolio of bloggers that have no turnover, and have been able to build out a roadmap for that five-year future that has seen early successes. This is the exact role any successful entrepreneur strives for. Our niche of the travel vertical complements well the other topics of interest such as entertainment, finance, and food.

Randy Petersen is the Founder of BoardingArea.