Case study
Travel Trends 2026: A scalable, immersive editorial platform
We partnered with Skyscanner to evolve their flagship annual trends report into a flexible, performance centred and visually ownable digital experience.
Industry
Technology
Services
Development, Editorial Platform
About Skyscanner Travel Trends
For the second year running, Skyscanner partnered with Human Made to bring their annual Travel Trends report to life on the web. With Human Made leading on development and the Skyscanner team delivering world-class design, Travel Trends 2025 set a strong foundation as a visually rich, high performing editorial experience.
The new Travel Trends 2026 platform introduces a mobile first, fully flexible content system for 19 markets across 11 languages, enriched by an evolved Brand World, motion design, interactive components and a distinctive visual identity anchored in the new Trends Lobby.
Alongside this, a shift in audience strategy meant incorporating new customer facing features such as embedded flight search and deeper integration into the Skyscanner ecosystem.
The result is a highly immersive, scalable and SEO focused platform that feels unmistakably Skyscanner.
Partnership over platform
Following a successful collaboration on Travel Trends 2025, Skyscanner returned to Human Made with a new pipeline that allowed content from any source to be published to their platform.
Although no longer tied to WordPress, they chose Human Made again due to the editorial flexibility and design freedom WordPress provides, as well as the strength of our long standing partnership.
The new project brought fresh challenges:
- Evolving the design system developed by Skyscanner to introduce motion, an entirely new art direction and new interaction patterns.
- Extending the report to 19 content rich markets, 17 locales and 11 languages, including right to left support.
- Meeting ambitious SEO and performance goals, with organic growth and Core Web Vitals as key success metrics.
- Delivering a consistent, on brand experience across a global audience while ensuring the editorial workflow remained intuitive and efficient.
The team also faced shifting requirements, with design templates and animation needs changing mid project and new content ingestion workflows arriving later than expected.
Designing for global scale and editorial ease
Insights from 2025 shaped a more scalable art direction for this year’s multilingual and market driven content needs.
Using full site editing for Travel Trends 2026 gave editors direct control over template variations, such as regional adaptations, reducing engineering dependencies.
Clear documentation and a dedicated editorial reference site enabled efficient population of 21 sites by external teams with minimal support required.
The new Brand World introduced motion tokens and more expressive animation. We worked closely with Skyscanner’s design team to deliver motion that felt premium while maintaining strong Core Web Vitals.
Shifting requirements were managed through Agile practices that kept us focused on performance, readability and SEO as final content arrived.
A high performing platform to drive organic growth
The 2026 site delivers:
- A distinctive, immersive editorial experience unique to Skyscanner
- Multilingual and right-to-left support across 19 markets
- Improved Core Web Vitals and mobile first page performance
- Shorter, benefit led content designed to reduce bounce rates
- Flexible interactive formats that support SEO and PR outreach
The result is a market leading travel insights platform that aligns with Skyscanner’s brand and global ambitions.
It’s been great to see how our relationship with Human Made has evolved over multiple projects over the years.
Their commitment to continuous improvement, flexibility in managing changing priorities, and willingness to guide us through technical and UX considerations have made them an invaluable partner. We’re already looking forward to future collaborations with Human Made.
Pam O’Neil, Senior Producer, Skyscanner
Building a stronger way of working together
The project —our 6th with Skyscanner in 2.5 years— reinforced a trusted partnership we’ve been building together since 2015. Agile processes played a significant role in managing shifting designs, late arriving assets and evolving content requirements.
Several members of the client team had limited prior exposure to Agile. Through consistent communication, clear value demonstration, and flexible facilitation, we built understanding and engagement over time – tailoring ceremonies to suit their context and securing stronger collaboration by the end of the project. Both teams saw the value of iterative decision making, clear sprint structures and transparent progress tracking.
The collaboration felt like a true partnership, with a shared commitment to delivering a beautiful, functional digital Travel Trends report that aligns with Skyscanner’s global brand standards.
The Human Made take
I had a lot of fun leading this project, and enjoyed working with the Skyscanner team to find creative solutions to some complex problems.
Sam Miller, Senior Web Engineer, Human Made
It was rewarding to guide this project and support the Skyscanner team as they adapted to new ways of working. Seeing collaboration strengthen and Agile practices take root over the course of the engagement was a real highlight.
Esther Abraham, Scrum Master, Human Made
With another project kicking off soon alongside the Skyscanner team, we can’t wait to see what the future holds for this powerful partnership.
Check out Skyscanner’s Travel Trends 2026.
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