Jason BrownWhen Jason Brown planned his summer vacation to Amsterdam and Ireland this year, he didn’t read travel books or check Instagram.
Instead, the founders of recruitment agency People Movers turned to ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence tool from Open AI.
He is planning a 10-day trip in July and August this year with his wife, two sons, aged 20 and 16, and one of his sons’ friends, and asked the AI a number of questions to help him plan an itinerary for a trip to Amsterdam and Ireland (including Dublin and Galway).
“I’d always used sites like TripAdvisor before, but now I realize through AI I have all this knowledge at my fingertips and it can spit it out to me in 15 seconds,” he says, describing the experience as “amazing.”
“They provided us with a golf trip in Dublin and a 4 day itinerary around Ireland. I was impressed with how it was split into morning, afternoon and evening trips.”
“For example, on the first day, I suggested arriving in the morning, spending the afternoon at Trinity College and Grafton Street, and going to Temple Bar in the evening.” In Amsterdam, he listed the Anne Frank Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Jordaan district, and other must-see spots. As the trip progressed, the number of questions on ChatGPT also increased.
Brown said he adopted many of the AI’s suggestions, but also relied on guided tours from friends who had visited in Amsterdam and word-of-mouth recommendations through an online community of people attending the same university.
“By doing so, I was able to experience some things that I couldn’t find on ChatGPT, but it gives you the perfect framework for your trip and gives you everything you need and want to see.”
AI is permeating every area of our lives, and travel is no exception. Besides ChatGPT, there are other generative AI tools like Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot, as well as AI sites dedicated to travel, like Trip Planner and Ask Layla.
AI appears to be becoming a part of travel planning for some, with one in ten Brits using it to plan trips, according to a survey by Sainsbury’s Travel Money, and one in five people said they are likely to use AI in the future.
However, the study also suggests that it will be some time before travel AI can handle all of your vacation planning.
The survey found that of those who had used AI to plan their trip, more than a third (38%) said the AI provided generic answers, 37% said it was missing information, and 30% said it was given incorrect information.
Generative AI can help provide personalized itineraries and recommendations, but it is only as good as the information it is trained on, and if that information is outdated, biased, erroneous or false, the AI will perpetuate misinformation, says Caroline Bremmer, head of travel and tourism research at analytics firm Euromonitor International.
“The challenge is ensuring factual, accurate, real-time information. There are risks if consumers don’t do their due diligence to verify the results Gen AI provides from other sources, such as speaking to people in the know, such as locals or travel agents.”
Sardar Bali is co-founder of Just Ask Layla, a Berlin-based AI travel planner and guide.
He says accuracy is a key part of the service.
“We have in-house tools,” says Bali, “and all content goes through a two-stage validation process, one of which is automated and the other is a manual process where our in-house team looks at different pieces of content and does a bit of research.”
However, he acknowledged that some content “may leak.”
“For example, we once mentioned the Eiffel Tower in Beijing, which may have been tagged incorrectly. But we’re getting better every day.”
That improvement is likely to come, especially as more services come online.
Travel giant Expedia launched an AI service for its U.S. customers earlier this year. Called “Romie,” the service is part of the company’s iPhone app.
“Travel can be complicated to plan, and there are countless options,” says Shiyi Pickrell, senior vice president of data and AI at Expedia Group.
She says Romy can help you narrow down your destination choices and compare different locations – for example, if you want a beach theme, you can compare beach destinations in the UK with Spain and France, or look at family-friendly locations.
Rebecca CroweBut AI doesn’t always go according to plan.
Rebecca Crowe, 29, a freelance writer from Liverpool, said she often uses AI to plan trips but is proceeding with caution after some bad experiences, including a trip to Lecco, a town next to Lake Como in Italy.
“The experience was poor,” Crowe says, “It listed all the popular activities you’d find with a standard Google search, and the itinerary didn’t make much logical sense.”
“They wanted us to go to Milan in the morning and Bellagio in the afternoon, but with train timetables and ferry schedules this wasn’t practical. Then we would return to Milan the next day for more sightseeing. If we followed this itinerary, we would spend more time traveling than anything else.”
She has also introduced AI to help her find gluten-free restaurants when traveling with a friend who has celiac disease.
“This method returned wildly outdated and sometimes incorrect results, and we found ourselves having to manually cross-reference each suggestion to see if the location was still open.
“If you’re looking for something seasonal, like ferry timetables for the off-season (a few months before or after peak season), the AI doesn’t seem to be up to date or accurate enough. The same goes for museums that have different opening hours depending on the season.”
Instead, she advises people to use it only as a forum for broader inspiration: “You can find blogs and websites with more reliable, up-to-date and complete guides and itineraries. It’s a great starting point if you just want a rough idea of what to do in a particular city, but the amount of fact-checking means it doesn’t save you much time in the long run.”
