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Your Next Travel Agent Might Be an AI Chatbot

For ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence solutions, specificity is key, and so are their limitations

a hand holds a phone showing a chat between a woman and a travel agent ai chat bot
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By

Edward C. Baig,

 
AARP
Published June 29, 2023

Today you search for flights, hotels and rental cars online — and look to pop culture, social media and the internet for inspiration on your next vacation. Artificial intelligence-infused chatbots are an emerging option to provide travel planning assistance. These tools are something to consider, but keep in mind that they’re not the only options.

You just might plan your future domestic or overseas adventures with a major assist from a chatbot like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or other so-called “generative AI” tools.

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These buzzy AI systems, which despite the hype are still in their relatively early days, are trained on vast amounts of human-generated data from across the web, what geeks refer to as large language models, or LLMs.

The idea is that you’ll have a conversation with an AI bot the same way you may ask the help of a friend or travel agent to conjure up day-to-day itineraries and spark suggestions of great places to visit, prompted by whatever you tell it.

To begin, you might type something like:

  • I’ve got two weeks, am traveling with elderly parents and want to visit national parks.
  • What are the top 10 fly fishing lodges in New Zealand?
  • I have six days and want to visit accessible places in and around Prague with my grandfather, who’s on a low-salt diet.
  • Create a one-week itinerary in the UK around a Beatles theme or Shakespeare.

Deeper into an exchange, you can get practical information, such as what transportation options are available between the airport and your hotel, or what it’s like driving somewhere.

“We look at AI as the catalyst that’s going to bring travel out of the dark ages,” says Ross Borden, chief executive of travel guide publisher Matador Network, which recently surveyed 1,400 travelers and found that more than a third are likely to employ AI to research or plan travel within the next 12 months.

Matador launched an upstart conversational bot called GuideGeek, initially via the WhatsApp messaging platform, powered by tech from OpenAI.

In April, the travel site Expedia launched an iOS-only chatbot in beta that is based on ChatGPT, with Android to follow. Expedia also has a ChatGPT plug-in, but it’s only available on the OpenAI site to people who subscribe to a $20 per month ChatGPT Plus service.

Likewise, the travel search engine Kayak has developed a ChatGPT plug-in, also available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers at the OpenAI site.

AI travel tools

Matador: GuideGeek conversational bot

Expedia: iOS-only chatbot; plus ChatGPT plug-in available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers

Kayak: ChatGPT plug-in available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers

Microsoft Bing: AI-powered chat results complement regular Bing search engine results

Google: AI travel-related search queries available to try through Search Labs, a place to test early-stage experimental Google tech

For its part, Google is employing generative AI to surface informational snapshots about destinations, culled from reviews, photos and business profile data folks submitted to Google for more than 200 million places globally. For now though, the feature is only available to those with access to Google Search Labs, an area where Google tests early-stage tech experiments. You can sign up for Search Labs through the Google app or on the Chrome web browser.

“You might ask if a certain restaurant is good for large groups or whether they’re vegetarian-friendly,” blogged Rany Ng, Google vice president of search product management, who acknowledges the tech is in an “experimental” phase. “Or maybe you want to know when people recommend visiting a particular landmark, so you can avoid the crowds.” 

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Microsoft’s revamped Bing search engine combines traditional search results with chat results based on OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology. You might ask “I’m planning a trip with cousins I don’t get to see often early in September. What beaches are within a three-hour flight from Rome?” After Bing generates a list, you can follow up with additional questions.

How might you best use AI while planning a trip?

Borden’s advice is to be as specific as possible in your prompt. Tell the AI who you are, the reason behind your trip and how much time you have. “Instead of ‘I want to go to Guatemala,’ say, ‘I want to go to Guatemala, I’m 60 years old, I’m traveling with my wife, this is our wedding anniversary trip … we have $300 a day to spend between the two of us. We want to do soft adventure and want to eat at great restaurants.’”

Or, “I’m an empty nester. I’m looking for solo travel experiences where I can dip my toe in some adventures, see some amazing nature. …But I only want to go to the safest destination.”

He also recommends using AI during a trip, such as when exploring a museum: “I’m at the Louvre. I’m standing in front of this exhibit. Tell me about this artist.”

Queries can touch on sensitive topics. “We’ve had people ask, ‘What are places in Asia that are not LGBTQ+ friendly?’” Borden says. “‘Where are there historically problems with racism across the world, or in this specific region?’”

Borden says GuideGeek securely stores information about users to make future recommendations, but no personal data is sold to third parties, protecting privacy.

The limitations of AI-generated travel

Keep in mind that AIs may dish out information that’s incomplete, inaccurate and out of date. It’s best to treat what you’re told as a starting point. You’ll likely have to fact check, do further research and find other tools for the skinny on hotel deals, when a trendy restaurant has opened or the fare drops.

Expedia chief architect Rajesh Naidu says when you go to Expedia’s AI and want to know, for example, if booking a trip to Miami in the summertime makes sense, “it’ll probably come back with some preliminary results from the OpenAI side, which [tells you] when it’s the busy season and everything else.” It is only when you create a trip to Miami on the Expedia side that you can take advantage of a price tracking feature. “That part of the integration is an opportunity for us to continue to work to refine it,” Naidu says.

Indeed, while you can engage the Expedia and Kayak AIs for some ideas, you must visit their respective websites or apps to actually book flights and hotels and get other tickets. You can save chats on Expedia to use later to plan a trip.

Early chat interfaces are visually ho-hum, and you may have to look elsewhere to see pictures of destinations you have in mind, ordinarily a rich part of travel planning. When this writer asked GuideGeek to display images of the Algarve region in Portugal, it provided a few third-party links, some of which turned out to be dead ends. Expedia’s AI wasn’t any more helpful on the same query: “I cannot display pictures, but I can suggest you search for ‘Algarve images’ on your preferred search engine to see some beautiful pictures of the region.”

Timing also matters. “If you’re going to New York tomorrow, you’re likely coming directly to the Kayak website,” notes Matthias Keller, chief scientist and senior vice president of technology at Kayak. “But if you’re debating a trip to Paris or Madrid this summer and want to know which is the cheaper city to visit and when, our plugin with ChatGPT is a great start on that travel planning journey.”

Rafat Ali, chief executive of Skift, a media company that focuses on the business of travel, envisions a hybrid approach in the way people plan trips that incorporates traditional search and conversational bots. “These chat-based things have to become more visual and location-aware,” he says. “We’re really talking 2025 and beyond where it becomes really useful.”

But Ali also wrote an article on Skift with a telling headline: “Generative AI is the travel industry’s future, get used to it.”

Edward C. Baig covers technology and other consumer topics. He previously worked for USA Today, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and Fortune, and is author of Macs for Dummies and coauthor of iPhone for Dummies and iPad for Dummies. Follow him on LinkedIn; Threads; and X, formerly known as Twitter.

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