How loveholidays is empowering non-engineers to build with ai-powered tools

loveholidays, a leading online travel agent operating in eight European markets, is leveraging Codex to enable non-engineers to contribute to its codebase. The company’s technology processes 60 trillion package combinations daily, supporting millions of travelers in finding their ideal holiday. By integrating Codex, loveholidays is transforming its development process, allowing product managers, designers, and commercial teams to prototype customer experiences, make data and infrastructure changes, and deploy code without relying on engineering queues. Dmitri Lerko, Head of Engineering at loveholidays, emphasized that 'everybody is a builder,' as the company aims to democratize software development across its organization. Mike Jones, CTO at loveholidays, highlighted the broader goal of building 'general intelligence for travel' by combining the company’s technology with human expertise and making both more accessible through AI. One example is Search Playground, a tool that enables teams to turn ideas into working customer experiences quickly. Over ten new search experiences have been developed through this platform, with at least three now live on the loveholidays website. The Data Platform has also seen significant improvements, with AI-assisted changes increasing from 58% to 93% in a year. The number of Data Platform changes per support request has risen fourfold, while success rates in self-service workflows have increased from 63% to 90%. Codex is helping to scale expertise by encoding best practices and validations into workflows that non-engineers can follow. This shift has led to a 73% increase in deployments, while engineering headcount has remained flat. The company measures AI impact against business outcomes rather than adoption alone. Loveholidays has reduced cloud storage costs by around £36,000 annually and saved approximately £100,000 by minimizing data-processing waste. Lerko noted that 'what used to be too hard is now ordinary,' as Codex becomes a common interface between people and the company’s technology. This model allows specialist expertise to be shared across the organization, enabling more people to turn ideas into products and allowing engineers to focus on higher-level problem-solving. For loveholidays, this represents 'general intelligence for travel,' combining its technology with human expertise and making both available to more of the business. The distinction between idea generators and builders is gradually disappearing as Codex continues to transform the company’s approach to development.