Omio Reimagines Travel with AI

Omio, a leading multimodal travel platform connecting over 3,000 transport providers across 47 countries, is betting big on conversational AI to redefine how people discover and book journeys. Moving beyond traditional multi-website searches, the company is partnering with OpenAI to offer AI-powered trip planning.

As consumer expectations shift towards natural language interactions, Omio saw an opportunity to create a more personalized booking experience. Travelers can now describe their desired trip and receive curated, bookable itineraries in return.

The travel tech firm became an early adopter of OpenAI's technology, experimenting with connecting ChatGPT to its real-time transportation data and booking systems. This allows users to ask complex queries like "What's the fastest train from Rome to Florence?" and receive actionable answers.

From Search to Conversation

Omio's vision extends beyond a simple chatbot feature; it represents a fundamental shift from search-based interfaces to an AI-native approach. This transformation is not limited to customer-facing products but is also deeply embedded in internal operations.

The company initially rolled out ChatGPT to all employees, fostering experimentation and identifying AI-driven improvements. This evolved into integrating OpenAI's Codex into engineering workflows, streamlining everything from research and coding to monitoring and maintenance.

"Codex is where the real work gets done," stated Tomas Vocetka, Omio's CTO, highlighting its critical role in development. Every engineer now utilizes Codex across the entire software development lifecycle.

AI-Native Transformation

Omio is actively building custom integrations to connect internal systems and data directly into AI tools, enabling employees to move from information retrieval to direct execution.

The company's overarching goal is to become AI-native by redesigning workflows from the ground up, rather than simply layering AI onto existing processes. This AI-native strategy is significantly accelerating product development.

Omio estimates that product development cycles have been reduced to approximately 20% of previous efforts, with projects that once took multiple developers a quarter now achievable by a single developer in about a month.

This acceleration enables more rapid experimentation, quicker decision-making, and a greater capacity for testing and refining ideas before committing significant resources.

Responsible Deployment

Throughout this AI integration, Omio emphasizes responsible deployment, ensuring human accountability remains paramount. "The responsibility and accountability stay with people," Vocetka noted. AI serves to accelerate processes, but human oversight ensures correct outcomes.

By combining broad access to OpenAI tools with strong governance and human oversight, Omio is establishing an operating model where AI enhances execution while employees retain ultimate responsibility.

Results and Future Outlook

Omio's AI initiatives have resulted in the creation of early conversational travel experiences, the connection of AI models to over 3,000 transport providers, and substantial reductions in product development effort. The company sees AI reshaping both external customer interactions and internal operational efficiency.

Omio anticipates the future of travel will involve less navigating search results and more direct interaction with intelligent systems linked to live transportation networks, defining a new era of conversational commerce.