In theory, chatbots that can instantaneously create travel plans are a marketer’s dream. The use case is easy to understand: Planning a vacation can be a real challenge for people. First, it involves toggling among flight listings, hotel availability, and ticketing websites for major attractions. Then, it requires more nuanced research, to figure out which local restaurants are actually good and which are overpriced tourist scams, or what time to set off for a big hike that won’t leave you in the woods after sunset.

Most of this travel information already lives on the internet or in books, meaning that it has likely already been incorporated into a chatbot’s training data. “There are probably thousands of places on webpages that describe a trip to Boston,” Kathleen Creel, a professor of philosophy and computer science at Northeastern University, told me. “There’s travel sites. There’s tour companies. There’s people on Reddit talking about their trip to Boston. There’s people on Reddit talking about living in Boston and what they like.” An AI tool trained on all of this data can process them to spit out a personalized itinerary.

But in practice, AI travel plans leave something to be desired. When I told ChatGPT that I was a “huge foodie” and asked it to adjust an L.A. itinerary accordingly, it suggested I go to a Michelin-starred restaurant for dinner. It didn’t say which one. It just told me that L.A. had some and that, if I liked food, I should go to one.

Read more:

Nyce, C. M. (2024, February 15). The AI Industry Is Stuck on One Very Specific Way to Use a Chatbot. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/02/chatbots-marketing-plan-your-next-trip/677481/