International online travel agency Kiwi.com unveiled three products and a major change to how people travel in early November this year, as part of its initiative to become an AI-native enterprise.
The announcement comes as companies across many fields attempt, with varying degrees of success, to integrate artificial intelligence into day-to-day operations and cut costs.
Transitioning to conversational search
The most important new feature announced by Kiwi, AI Mode, lets users search for flights in plain language directly inside OpenAI (ChatGPT UI app), Anthropic (Claude connector), and Google (Gemini Enterprise connector).
Ease of use is the new feature’s strongest point. Kiwi.com’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) server translates natural language requests, such as “somewhere warm in late March, under EUR 200, two adults and a toddler,” into structured, real-time flight itineraries. The system pulls live pricing and route combinations.
The transition to conversational search is already driving user adoption. High-intent conversational searches on Kiwi.com’s MCP server have expanded 10x since January 2026.
Some of the most eager users of AI-powered travel planning are Romanians, according to research conducted for Kiwi.com by STEM/MARK in January 2026. Almost 8 in 10 Romanian respondents expressed interest in using AI to support at least part of their travel planning process, with price comparison emerging as the most popular use case (56.9%). Other areas where Romanian travelers see value in AI include analyzing hotel reviews (43.6%) and identifying convenient flight connections (36.5%).
However, while 10.2% of Romanian respondents would consider fully delegating their travel planning and booking to AI, more than half (53.8%) prefer a hybrid approach, relying on AI to simplify searches and compare options while making the final booking themselves. Nevertheless, the company will not force AI upon its customers.
“AI mode is not mandatory. There could be too much AI noise, making it hard for customers to use the product according to their preferences,” said Michal Šindelář.
AI-native travel agency
Kiwi’s AI implementation started in 2023, with many experiments. In 2024, the company implemented AI in customer support. Today, about 85% of customer inquiries are handled by AI.
In 2025, Kiwi.com implemented agents at work in every single function, such as the back office and internal knowledge. Now Kiwi operates as an AI-native MCP, and every department has an AI colleague: Nathan handles customer support; Otto is shared company memory; Steven handles data & analytics; James in engineering builds & runs the platform, and so on.
However, Kiwi kept humans in the loop. Every complicated task is approved by a human; read-only is the default; big decisions are gated by humans; and spending caps are imposed on every agent.
At present, the company makes use of numerous AI agents that allow its engineers to take an idea to working prototype status in 30 minutes and sift through data much faster than before.
“Previously, 30-40 people would need to work for months on a major product. Today, 7-8 people worked on Kiwi Club and other projects, and it took them 4 weeks,” said Stanislav Stefanic, VP of Engineering.
According to Stefanic, agents do the work, but humans stay accountable by design.
“AI is a product, a piece of technology, but Kiwi employees handle key steps,” he explained.
Kiwi officials noted that the implementation of AI agents resulted in a 50%+ growth in bookings YTD.
Growing interest in travel disruption protection
Aside from AI Mode, Kiwi Guarantee is the company’s flagship insurance program that provides support and protection if something goes wrong.
Although not entirely new, the Guarantee faced a major stress test during the outbreak of the Iran war, when flights were grounded across the Middle East region, and takeoffs were randomly allowed or delayed.
Roughly 100,000 people travelling with Kiwi were caught in the chaos, but the company managed to support their return home nonetheless. “Without technology, this is close to impossible. You would need too many people,” said Kiwi CTO Stano Komanec.
In an interview with Romania Insider, Michal Šindelář, VP of Consumer Product at Kiwi.com, said that travelers’ anxieties have increased since the pandemic and that the war in Iran was sadly not the only occasion that reinforced those same worries.
“The appetite or the interest of the customers to protect against problems in advance and be covered has increased tremendously. For us, at Kiwi, this was the moment when we realized this would be a trend that is likely to continue in the future. We built the Kiwi.com Guarantee as a result,” he said.
According to Šindelář, the Kiwi Guarantee was chosen by 1.3 million passengers since June 2024, and 42,000 of them were helped after a disruption. Roughly EUR 7.4 million in Kiwi credit was also paid for disrupted trips. Today, more than 10% of customers choose the Guarantee as an extra option.
Frequent flyers opt for real-time trip updates
The Guarantee comes with the Live Boarding Pass, a feature that is best used on the Kiwi mobile app. According to the company representatives, unlike a traditional PDF-based boarding pass, the Live Pass gives updated context, alerts, time, place, and the status of the trip. Travellers receive info about the airport, terminal, gates, and other airport-specific info, many of which can change even in normal circumstances.
Moreover, 11% of travellers share a boarding pass with co-travellers, another feature of the Kiwi app. The whole set of information is sent, not just the boarding pass code, allowing family members to keep track of each other.
According to Michal Šindelář, infrequent flyers may not understand the benefits of the Live Boarding Pass.
“Those who are more used to flying know that airlines have different check-in times. It is even more complicated if you have to fly with different airlines or have more complex itineraries. If you have the Kiwi Guarantee, you book the flight, we do the check-in for you, and you can just forget about it. Just open the application, and there is the Live Boarding Pass, and you can board the plane,” he said.
Kiwi’s Live Boarding Pass benefits from data from local data providers, which reunites different legacy travel systems and airport or airline information.
“We can give you information about schedule changes sooner than from airlines or from when the change is visible on the airport TV displays,” the Kiwi VP of Consumer Product explained.
Close to half of locked-fare trips get booked
Another new feature unveiled by Kiwi is the wishlist and Price Alert functions. The mechanism is straightforward: would-be travellers search for a trip and save it, watching the price evolve with a Price Alert. Each user can set the deviation from the original price and receive a notification when this deviation takes place. A price can also be locked for a fee. Kiwi covers increases if the price is locked.
According to company data shared with Romania Insider, 4% of bookings start from the wishlist, 15% of users with price alerts book in the same month, and 42% of locked fares are booked.
Loyalty scheme expected to reach 500K members this year
The most visible recent launch of a Kiwi product, the Kiwi Club is the travel agency’s own loyalty scheme. The program is free to join for anyone who has used Kiwi.com at least once, and members receive monthly vouchers that can be used for bookings.
The Club also features a Black Tier, the members of which receive extra benefits. According to Kiwi, Club members are projected to grow in number to 500,000 in 2026. A third of customers after a booking on Kiwi.com is done become members.
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