Fresh from attending his first aviation conference, after four years away from travel, Filip Filipov, chief operating officer of OAG, is as excited as he was when he first got into the digital travel space in 2009 as “a bright-eyed kid from Bulgaria”.
“It’s wonderful to be back,” said Filipov, over butter chicken and naan at a local hotel in Singapore, where incidentally he did his MBA at Insead. “I am bullish and excited about where technology will take us. Yes, there’s still the same talk about personalization but we are still a long way from the seamless journey from the customer perspective.”
Filipov, who spent a large part of his career with Skyscanner before leaving the industry in 2019, feels this is a blind spot in the industry. “Everyone’s talking about the connected trip – but that’s more about how to sell a flight, a hotel, a tour and activity – but it’s not addressing it from the customer perspective.
“We are way too focused on the shopping experience and not about the customer journey.”
For example, he said, “why do I have to give my passport everytime I check into a hotel? My flight is at midnight tonight, why can’t the hotel contact me and say, we know you have a late flight, would you like a late checkout? I know what will happen, I can go to the front desk to ask, and they will say $400 more, and I will say no.
Filip Filipov: “We are way too focused on the shopping experience and not about the customer journey.”
“Technology has the possibility to deliver the connected customer experience, to be my true agent from start to finish. It can sync with my calendar, tell me about the weather, send me reminders, give me important numbers, especially if you are travelling with a child, alert me to queues in security lines … there are so many touchpoints.”
To solve this, he said, it’s all about data, data sharing, integration, connectivity and collaboration at an industry level. “We are not doing enough to add value to the consumer.”
AI will play big role in data landscape
While at the Aviation Festival Asia, Filipov ran a workshop on generative AI – “more of a 101 class on what’s out there, how it works and how to use it”.
“When I asked for a show of hands as to who’s using it, very few were raised, so it shows the airline industry has a long way to go in terms of personal adoption by executives. And how technology waves start is always with personal adoption – if your customers are using it, then you’d better be using it.”
The current priority among airline executives, according to conversations he heard at the conference, was about retailing and better merchandising – “offer and order, merchandising, and being where the customer wants to be and all of this needs data”.
He said that OAG, with its vast sets of data, has what the industry cares about. “It is a good moment for offer and order, and AI will make the experience a lot better.”
OAG, as a business, has also changed dramatically – which is not surprising given that it started in 1926, making it a 96-year-old company.
“It historically sold a lot of books, then airline schedules and status which has become the industry truth, then pricing – we have four billion pricing points a day. What we do is provide data to give you insights and knowledge to make decisions.”
He said that AI will dramatically change the data landscape by ensuring the highest quality data input and “on the customer side, their ability to take in a lot more information is also dramatically enhanced. Now you can input a full book of schedules and have a conversation.”
OpenAI’s Operator and its potential in the travel vertical
He is most excited about OpenAI’s launch of Operator, an AI-powered agent tool that can interact with websites by typing, clicking and scrolling, and can search and complete purchases for things like travel, groceries, events, restaurant reservations and more.
“It’s impressive and it’ll be interesting when it starts to innovate in the different verticals,” he said, adding, “Kudos to Booking.com to be the first to create a plug-in with ChatGPT, two months after the launch, and now experimenting with Operator.
“The question to ask is, are ChatGPT and Gemini top of the funnel yet? Are they bigger than meta? Google? We don’t know yet. It’s still early in the game.”
Where he thinks the “agent” experience could add value is to loyalty programmes such as Expedia OneKey or Edreams’ subscription programme. “Right now, all you get as a member is discounted prices but what if it could provide next level customer service through an agentic experience that covers the entire customer journey?
“Of course, people will always want the same quality at a lower price but there is an opportunity to provide concierge service through an agent.”
