How ChatGPT saved Dubai family’s Maldives vacation with beach villa and pool— but can AI really plan travel?

Does anyone remember what the pre-AI life was like?

Don’t Chat GPT it to find out.

Sigh. No doubt, it’s a boon. It’s so deeply interwoven into our lives now that most can’t even remember the days of manually combing through pages of Google. From general advice to therapeutic, AI is the trusted friend, it seems.

And now, travel too.

A perfunctory and entertaining read through Reddit reveals the different experiences of asking what it’s like to tell AI to plan your stay. One user writes, “I've been playing around with it for a while and find it to be a very powerful tool to aid in travel planning. It's great in suggesting general itineraries of where to go or for things to do in a country.”

However, they notice some discrepancies. “It doesn't have a good sense of transfer or travel times, so it oftentimes suggests itineraries that are too filled or just impossible to do. Although, this is easily resolved by tweaking your prompts to factor in slower travel time. You can also ask it to focus on specific things such as food, culture, time in cities versus nature, certain activities.”

Another firmly commented on the thread, calling it ‘pretty much useless’ and said that the responses were ‘stale and canned’, also mentioning that sometimes, Chat GPT also has a tendency to invent names and places. “It may be useful to get some inspiration if you start out with zero knowledge, but a quick google search will come up with equally or more useful sources that don't require to fact check every single piece of information.” One person agreed with this sentiment, mentioning that the answers were generic and made-up.

So, should you rely solely on AI to form your travel plans? Or can you use it like a tool and still do your own research?

Dubai residents rely on the second category. A mix of both, is what you need.

Saved by AI: When travel plans fail

Dubai-based Tazeen Jafri a Dubai-based public relations consultant and her family was in a fix. They had planned a trip to Sri Lanka, and unfortunately, their electronic authorisation didn’t come through. It was a disappointment: Everything had been set, down to hotel bookings. Now, what?

That’s where Chat GPT was useful. “We checked the next best place to go, and it was Maldives,” she recalls. “Then we asked to find resorts and islands closer to the airport as we couldn’t do the sea plane thing with two kids and also have full board options with private villas on the beach, but it also had to be economical,” adds Jafri. And so, Chat GPT recommended Sai Lagoon, Maldives, which was the most feasible one for her family. It suggested list of resorts in the order of closest to airport, and feasibility with villas on the beach with private pools. So, they found a private villa with a pool, after contacting the properties.

It’s not the first time that Chat GPT has been helpful. As Jafri explains, “My husband and I tend to up and leave spontaneously for trips, since we got married and yes now too with two kids, so I’ve also asked for places with visa free entry and visa on arrival for Pakistanis and UAE residents,” she says.

Mix and match: Combining AI with classic methods

Similarly, Anna Ivanova-Galitsina and her partner, enjoyed Italy with the help of Copilot, another AI platform. “We wanted to see Tuscany and Umbria. We knew we wanted to see history and architecture and places that are not too big. So this is what we asked: Suggest four day road trip with places to see and four days back via the coast. Copilot gave more than we could visit, so we filtered some places out.,” she recalls.

Galitsina also asked Copilot for reasons to visit each destination and looked up nearby attractions herself. “We requested that no drive be longer than three hours from town to town,” she explains. “We still used Booking.com to find hotels. Some of the suggested towns were places we’d never heard of and might have otherwise skipped—like San Gimignano, which turned out to be beautiful.”

As Ivanova-Galitsina wryly admits, “You can make bad choices without AI too. One seaside town ended up being more of an industrial port than we expected. But the fish restaurant Copilot recommended there was amazing.”

In the end, they used a mix of sources. “We combined Copilot’s suggestions with Googling, reading a physical guidebook, Google Maps, and Booking.com,” she says. “We try to use multiple sources of information when we travel.”

The golden rule: Cross-check everything

The key line: Using multiple sources of information, when you travel. Jafri calls and checks, while Ivanova-Galitsina ensured that she had several sources of information to rely on, before heading out.

Anika Berger, a Dubai-based resident, who also planned a getaway to Italy says: Chat GPT is helpful, but it needs the right prompts. So I feel more time efficient for an initial start search and then when you have more of an idea of what you like the sound of you can dive deeper with your own research,” she says.

Cautionary tales: When AI gets it wrong

However, Abu Dhabi-based Raahat Singh, is dubious about AI, after she tried to ask for recommendations for a stay in Portree, a town in Scotland. “It invented a lot of things and started suggesting restaurants that didn’t exist. So, no, I prefer to do my search and research the traditional way: Googling and talking to people.”

Singh doesn’t deny that Chat GPT or other AI tools might have their benefits in planning, but feels it is rather worrying to depend entirely on AI. “We just want quick answers and no doubt, AI hands that to us in a structured platter. But it can be so wrong, so you need to double check constantly,” she says.