Virgin Australia has become the first Australian airline to formally collaborate with OpenAI, announcing a landmark plan to put ChatGPT at the centre of how customers plan and shop for travel — on the same day OpenAI inked a separate enterprise-wide deal with retail giant Wesfarmers. [1]
The twin announcements on 28 November 2025 mark a major moment for generative AI in Australia: one deal reshapes how travellers search for flights, the other pushes ChatGPT Enterprise into the everyday toolkit of tens of thousands of workers.
Virgin Australia bets on ChatGPT for “next generation” flight shopping
Virgin Australia’s new agreement positions it as the first airline in the country with direct access to OpenAI’s latest capabilities, with a brief to “redefine the travel experience” by making planning and booking more personalised, convenient and connected. [2]
Key elements of the collaboration include: [3]
- Building new flight search and shopping tools on OpenAI’s API platform
- Exploring a Virgin Australia “app” inside ChatGPT using OpenAI’s new Apps SDK so travellers can plan journeys conversationally without leaving the ChatGPT interface
- Giving Virgin Australia staff secure access to enterprise-grade AI tools, including ChatGPT Enterprise, to streamline internal work
Virgin frames the deal as the “next stage” of a broader digital transformation that has already seen it roll out AI across pricing, marketing and customer experience. [4]
Australia’s strong adoption of ChatGPT is part of the backdrop: Virgin notes that the country now ranks among the top 10 markets globally for ChatGPT subscribers, making it a logical test bed for deep airline–AI integration. [5]
From AI Trip Planner to ChatGPT-native flight search
Today’s announcement builds on something many Virgin customers can already see: the AI Trip Planner embedded on the airline’s website.
On Virgin’s destinations and homepage, travellers are invited to “describe your ideal trip and let AI find the flights that take you there.” The Trip Planner, currently in beta, helps users build personalised itineraries, discover destinations and understand both regular fares and Velocity Reward Seat availability. [6]
Behind the scenes, the new OpenAI deal pushes that idea a step further:
- Virgin says it is working on “next generation flight shopping”, where customers can describe the trip they want and be directed to the most relevant Virgin Australia options, rather than manually sifting through route and date filters. [7]
- Coverage in the Australian Financial Review notes that the airline is exploring a dedicated app inside ChatGPT as part of the broader partnership — effectively bringing real-time Virgin flight search into OpenAI’s own product. [8]
In practice, that means a traveller could type something like “I want to take my family to Fiji in July for 10 days, flying from Brisbane, with enough time for a stopover in Sydney” into ChatGPT and, via Virgin’s app and APIs, receive a curated set of options rather than a generic list of web links.
Guardrails: what AI will not do (bookings, payments, emergencies)
Alongside the hype, Virgin is unusually explicit about the limits of its AI features. The Trip Planner Terms of Use, updated in September 2025, set out what the chatbot can and cannot do. [9]
According to those terms (paraphrased):
- The Trip Planner is a conversational tool for general travel inquiries and suggestions, not an official source of advice or commitments
- Responses are computer-generated and may be inaccurate, incomplete, outdated or unsuitable for a user’s specific circumstances
- AI suggestions do not constitute binding offers or guarantees, and customers are urged to independently verify information before making decisions
- The AI cannot be used to:
- Make or modify bookings
- Access personal booking or Velocity Frequent Flyer details
- Provide emergency assistance
- Process payments or financial transactions
- Offer legal, medical or immigration advice
The message is clear: AI can help you brainstorm and shortlist options, but actual bookings and critical decisions still run through Virgin’s official systems and human support channels.
Those guardrails are designed both to manage the risks of AI hallucinations and to reassure regulators that new interfaces won’t quietly replace existing consumer protections.
Inside Virgin’s wider AI play: pricing, loyalty and “meeting customers where they are”
The OpenAI collaboration arrives on top of several AI-driven initiatives the airline has already deployed. Virgin highlights that it: [10]
- Uses AI-driven insights to forecast demand and power market-based dynamic airfare pricing
- Has launched the AI Trip Planner to make it easier to discover destinations and reward seats
- Sees AI as the next chapter in a long-running innovation strategy that previously introduced online check-in, Economy X extra-legroom seating, baggage tracking, “Pets in Cabin” and the much‑publicised “Middle Seat Lottery”
Chief executive Dave Emerson says the goal is to meet customers “in the places and platforms they use most to plan and shop for travel,” explicitly naming ChatGPT as one of those destinations. [11]
By being present inside ChatGPT — rather than just optimising its own website or app — Virgin is effectively treating conversational AI as a new distribution channel, similar in strategic weight to online travel agencies or metasearch engines.
Wesfarmers rolls out ChatGPT Enterprise across the group
While Virgin focuses on travellers, Wesfarmers is looking inward at its workforce.
In a same‑day briefing, Capital Brief reported that Wesfarmers has signed an enterprise deal with OpenAI to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise across the conglomerate, backed by customised training programs for staff. [12]
Wesfarmers managing director Rob Scott said the group is ramping up AI use in areas such as: [13]
- Demand forecasting
- Product design
- Customer service and in‑store experience
- Marketing effectiveness
- Conversational commerce
The deal will touch a wide mix of businesses under the Wesfarmers umbrella — from big‑box retail to health and industrial brands — and builds on a long‑running investment in advanced analytics, including a group-wide analytics centre established several years ago to bring data science into decisions on pricing, customer insights and supply chain. [14]
On LinkedIn, Wesfarmers framed the partnership as a way to “accelerate the use of AI” to support team member productivity and improve customer experience, with ChatGPT Enterprise made available across the group alongside structured training. [15]
In other words, while Virgin is putting AI in front of passengers, Wesfarmers is trying to put it in front of almost every employee.
OpenAI’s wider enterprise land grab
The Virgin and Wesfarmers announcements are part of a broader, increasingly aggressive enterprise push by OpenAI.
In October, a Reuters report highlighted that the company now has a “huge focus” on enterprise growth, supported by a growing slate of partnerships spanning infrastructure, hardware and software. [16]
In August, OpenAI unveiled a flagship government deal in the United States: a first‑of‑its‑kind arrangement to offer ChatGPT Enterprise to federal executive branch agencies for a token US$1 per agency for a year. The initiative is backed by training programs and a dedicated government user community, and is explicitly pitched as a way to embed AI into public‑sector workflows at scale. [17]
In travel specifically, OpenAI has already helped Booking.com launch multiple AI‑powered planning tools, and more recently introduced ChatGPT Atlas, a browser‑like product capable of independently searching and booking flights. [18]
Seen against that backdrop, Virgin Australia’s move looks less like an isolated experiment and more like local adoption of a global AI distribution platform — one that OpenAI is rapidly weaving into everything from airlines and online travel agencies to government departments and retail conglomerates.
What this means for travellers
For travellers, the Virgin–OpenAI partnership could change both where and how flight searches start.
If the integration delivers what’s promised, customers should be able to: [19]
- Start in ChatGPT with a natural‑language query (“a long weekend in Hobart with a late departure on Friday and early return Sunday”)
- Receive tailored Virgin Australia options based on constraints and preferences
- Click through to complete bookings via Virgin’s standard systems
That kind of experience could:
- Compress the research phase, especially for infrequent travellers who find existing booking engines intimidating
- Make it easier to surface reward seats and fare deals in line with a traveller’s budget and flexibility
- Encourage more impulse or inspiration‑driven trips, where users start with “I want somewhere warm in June within a 4‑hour flight” rather than a specific destination
But there are caveats. Because Virgin’s terms stress that AI responses may be wrong or outdated — and that the Trip Planner cannot currently make or change bookings — travellers will still need to double‑check details like schedules, prices and fare rules before paying. [20]
In the medium term, as more of the logic moves into ChatGPT apps, a key test will be how clearly airlines distinguish between AI suggestions and binding offers, and how easy it is for customers to recover from errors, misunderstandings or mis‑priced itineraries.
What this means for workers and corporate Australia
Wesfarmers’ adoption of ChatGPT Enterprise illustrates a parallel shift: AI is becoming standard issue workplace software, not a niche pilot.
With an enterprise licence plus structured training, staff across functions such as merchandising, finance, HR, IT and frontline operations can start to: [21]
- Automate routine documentation and reporting
- Prototype and test marketing copy or product descriptions
- Run “what‑if” analyses on pricing or inventory
- Experiment with conversational tools for customer queries and support
Global data suggests this kind of rollout can move fast: one recent industry analysis estimated that ChatGPT Enterprise has more than 600,000 paying business customers worldwide, with adoption across roughly 92% of Fortune 500 companies. [22]
For Australian enterprises, the Wesfarmers deal sends a signal that generative AI is no longer a fringe experiment but a capability that boards expect to be baked into core operations, supported by training and governance rather than left to shadow IT.
The bigger picture: AI moves from pilot to infrastructure
Taken together, today’s announcements show generative AI crossing an important threshold in Australia:
- For consumers, AI is becoming a visible, branded part of everyday experiences like flight search and trip planning.
- For employees, tools like ChatGPT Enterprise are shifting from optional gadgets to default work companions.
- For OpenAI, these partnerships deepen its position not just as a model provider, but as a distribution layer for how people and businesses search, plan and transact.
Travellers can already experiment with Virgin Australia’s AI Trip Planner on the airline’s website, while more advanced ChatGPT‑native experiences are in development. [23]
As more airlines, retailers and governments follow Virgin and Wesfarmers’ lead, the real question may not be whether we use AI to plan trips and do our jobs — but whose AI we’re using, and how transparently it works.
References
1. www.virginaustralia.com, 2. www.virginaustralia.com, 3. www.virginaustralia.com, 4. www.virginaustralia.com, 5. www.virginaustralia.com, 6. www.virginaustralia.com, 7. www.virginaustralia.com, 8. www.afr.com, 9. www.virginaustralia.com, 10. www.virginaustralia.com, 11. www.virginaustralia.com, 12. www.capitalbrief.com, 13. www.capitalbrief.com, 14. www.itnews.com.au, 15. www.linkedin.com, 16. www.reuters.com, 17. openai.com, 18. openai.com, 19. www.virginaustralia.com, 20. www.virginaustralia.com, 21. www.capitalbrief.com, 22. www.ainvest.com, 23. www.virginaustralia.com
