Less than a year into leading OAG, CEO Filip Filipov sat down with PhocusWire's Linda Fox and the thing that's actually surprised him isn't AI, it's customers.

Preferences are outrunning what technology can deliver, on both consumer and B2B sides. The industry, he says, is chasing customers' dreams of what a product could be rather than what's currently buildable.

AI adoption matched his expectations directionally but beat them on speed — marketing, finance, and commercial teams picked it up as fast as engineering did.

But he pushes back on treating adoption as even across the industry. A startup with the right people moves fast. A decades-old institution carrying legacy process and PII constraints is often capped at Copilot in Word. He's also skeptical of "AI" as a catch-all, lumping product, technology, and distribution together as if they're one thing.

The conversation also covers the CEO role's personal weight and where he sees real innovation in travel.

Less than a year into leading OAG, CEO Filip Filipov sat down with PhocusWire's Linda Fox and the thing that's actually surprised him isn't AI, it's customers.
Preferences are outrunning what technology can deliver, on both consumer and B2B sides. The industry, he says, is chasing customers' dreams of what a product could be rather than what's currently buildable.
AI adoption matched his expectations directionally but beat them on speed &mdash; marketing, finance, and commercial teams picked it up as fast as engineering did.
But he pushes back on treating adoption as even across the industry. A startup with the right people moves fast. A decades-old institution carrying legacy process and PII constraints is often capped at Copilot in Word. He's also skeptical of "AI" as a catch-all, lumping product, technology, and distribution together as if they're one thing.
The conversation also covers the CEO role's personal weight and where he sees real innovation in travel.

A regular dissection of the news, issues and trends in travel and technology, featuring interviews with industry executives and entrepreneurs and hosted by PhocusWire editors.

A regular dissection of the news, issues and trends in travel and technology, featuring interviews with industry executives and entrepreneurs and hosted by PhocusWire editors.

In Phocus is a regular dissection of the news, issues and trends in travel and technology, featuring interviews with industry executives and entrepreneurs and hosted by PhocusWire editors.

In Phocus

OAG CEO Filip Filipov tells PhocusWire's Linda Fox that less than a year in, the real surprise isn't AI's rapid adoption — it's that customer expectations are moving even faster than the technology can keep up, while AI itself remains unevenly adopted across an industry still conflating product, technology, and distribution under one buzzword.