How Omio is building the future of conversational travel
Moving from search to conversation
Omio(opens in a new window) is one of the world’s leading multimodal travel platforms, connecting millions of travelers with trains, buses, ferries and flights. The company works with more than 3,000 transportation providers across 47 countries. As travel becomes increasingly digital, Omio is reimagining how people discover and book journeys through conversational AI.
As consumer expectations shift toward conversational interfaces, Omio saw an opportunity to rethink how travel discovery works. Traditional travel planning often requires navigating multiple websites, comparing transportation modes, and piecing together itineraries across providers. Omio believed AI could create a fundamentally different experience—one where travelers simply describe where they want to go and receive personalized, bookable journeys in return.
As an early OpenAI customer and partner, Omio became one of the first travel companies to experiment with conversational travel experiences powered by real-time transportation data. At the same time, the company recognized that the same technology reshaping customer experiences could transform how work gets done internally.
We sat down with Tomas Vocetka, Omio’s CTO, to discuss the company’s vision for conversational travel, its journey toward becoming AI-native, and how OpenAI is helping accelerate innovation across both customer experiences and internal operations.
Bringing conversational travel to life
In 2023, Omio launched one of the earliest travel experiences available through ChatGPT, connecting OpenAI models directly to Omio’s transportation inventory and booking systems.
The integration enabled travelers to ask natural-language questions such as “What’s the fastest route from Rome to Florence?” or “Should I take a train or flight from Paris to Barcelona?” Rather than relying on static information, the experience connected ChatGPT to live transportation inventory and pricing data, helping users discover real, bookable journeys through conversation.
More recently, Omio expanded that vision with a dedicated ChatGPT experience built on OpenAI models and connected to its global transportation network. By grounding responses in verified travel data, the company is helping building towards a new category of conversational commerce where AI serves as the interface layer between customers and real-world transportation systems.
For Omio, conversational travel is not simply a new feature. It represents a broader shift from search-based interfaces to AI-native customer experiences.
Inside the rollout
While Omio was building AI-powered experiences for travelers, it was also transforming how teams operate internally.
The company began by rolling out ChatGPT to employees across the organization, enabling teams to experiment, learn, and identify opportunities to improve their work. As adoption matured, Omio expanded into Codex, embedding it deeply into engineering workflows and increasingly extending it to non-technical functions.
“We rolled out ChatGPT. That was a teaser. Codex is where the real work gets done.”
—Tomas Vocetka, CTO, Omio
Today, every engineer uses Codex throughout the software development lifecycle—from research and planning to coding, testing, code reviews, monitoring, and maintenance. Omio is also building custom integrations and connectors that bring internal systems, data, and workflows directly into AI-powered tools, allowing employees to move beyond information retrieval and into execution.
The company’s broader goal is to become AI-native—not by layering AI onto existing processes, but by rethinking how work gets done from the ground up. “All functions need to rethink how they do the work” explains Vocetka.
That mindset has already reshaped the way Omio builds products. Teams are able to move from idea to execution significantly faster, reducing the cost and effort required to test new concepts and validate customer needs.
Omio estimates that many products can now be built in roughly 20% of the time previously required. “Projects that used to take several developers a quarter can now be done by one developer in around a month.” says Vocetka. Faster development cycles have enabled more experimentation, quicker decision-making, and a greater ability to test and refine ideas before making larger investments.
Throughout the transformation, Omio has maintained a clear principle around responsible deployment.
“The responsibility and accountability stay with people. AI helps us develop faster, analyze faster, and make decisions faster, but people stay in charge.”
—Tomas Vocetka, CTO, Omio
By combining broad access to OpenAI tools with strong governance and human oversight, Omio is creating an operating model where AI accelerates execution while employees remain accountable for outcomes.
Results at a glance
Built one of the earliest conversational travel experiences on ChatGPT
Connected OpenAI models to 3,000+ transportation providers across 47 countries
Reduced product development effort to approximately 20% of previous levels
Accelerated projects from one quarter to roughly one month
Expanded AI adoption beyond engineering into business functions across the company
Enabled faster experimentation, product iteration, and decision-making
Leadership lessons
Treat AI as a business transformation initiative, not a technology project
Drive adoption from the top while enabling experimentation throughout the organization
Focus on redesigning workflows rather than simply automating existing tasks
Maintain human accountability while using AI to accelerate execution
View AI as both a product strategy and an operating model
What’s next
Omio sees AI reshaping both sides of its business.
Externally, conversational interfaces are changing how travelers discover, compare, and book transportation. Internally, AI is becoming a foundational layer for how teams build products, make decisions, and operate at scale.
The company believes the future of travel will be less about navigating search results and more about interacting with intelligent systems connected directly to live transportation networks.
“It’s changing how we work, what we build, how we build, and how we operate.”
—Tomas Vocetka, CTO, Omio
As Omio continues expanding its AI-native approach, the company is helping define what conversational commerce looks like in travel—combining OpenAI models with real-world transportation infrastructure to make travel planning faster, simpler, and more personalized.
For Omio, becoming AI-native is not a future ambition. It is an active transformation already changing how travel is discovered, booked, and delivered today.
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