The advent of Artificial Intelligence tools has started to spread into all aspects of our everyday lives – including travel planning. And it makes total sense: Planning a trip is a complex endeavor that involves researching multiple publications and websites, looking for highlights and comparing hotels, searching for restaurants that are worthwhile visiting and so on. Sounds like an ideal task for an Artificial Intelligence model that is specialized in bringing together multiple sources of complex information. Here’s how it is done.

How Artificial Intelligence can help your trip planning

Let’s start with a refresher how AI works. Current large language models, such as ChatGPT-4, are trained on taking everything that’s ever been written on the web and compiling answers to queries from this body of knowledge. The AI can even take into account your personal preferences it has learned about you over time, or be asked more specific detailing questions.

I have used AI tools on several recent trips and it has significantly improved my trip planning, given me more options and finding hidden gems that I would have never found before. Plus, it saved me time on a lot of details. Let’s look at some examples.

Finding a restaurant with AI

Consider AI your personal concierge and ask them questions like “what are some good options for steak in New York”. These are easy questions and you’ll likely get a ton of answers. Be more precise and tell AI exactly which kinds of steakhouses you like: “Give me only steakhouses that cook over an open wood fired grill” or “Show me the hidden gems where only the locals go”.

You can also ask the AI bot for restaurants specialized in specific dishes, and combine requests just like “show me steakhouses with an open-fire grill that are near the airport and where I can eat an early dinner”.

Putting together travel itineraries with AI

This is one of the most fun parts about AI travel planning. The Artificial Intelligence can create a whole custom itinerary for you, taking into consideration the length of stay and any preferences. Be sure to be specific, and also maybe ask some general questions about the destination beforehand so that the AI can learn your preferences. For me, the AI already knows I love authentic slow food, photography and golfing. In creating itineraries for me, it always takes that into account. And as before, ask specific follow-up questions to become even more precise.

Go Beyond Trip Planning

One of the strengths of these new AI models like ChatGPT-4 is to compile a concise overview about a topic from an almost infinite amount of resources. Try using that to get a quick overview about the history of a country, or of a certain monument. For example, “What was the role of Crete island during WWII?” or “What do I need to know about the Colosseum in Rome?”. The AI will compile all the essentials into a less-than-one-page document, which is perfect to read even while on a train or an airplane.

One learning I took from my research is to not be shy about the types of questions and complexity to ask the AI. It is built for that, so talk with it just like you would ask a good friend.

As always with AI, take any results with a grain of salt and do your own research to confirm. As convincing as many of the AI answers sound, the information is always only as good as the inputs. AI can still be wrong (and oftentimes is).