AI has dominated conversations lately. It seems like anytime it’s brought up I’m hearing it’s the downfall of integrity for students (yes, I’m in education) or it’s going to completely change the way we do business on more levels than we even realize.
I’m in the “this is going to change everything” camp. Though some of my friends rail on about plagiarism and the downfall of integrity I remind them that nuns once thought the invention of the ballpoint pen was a device of the devil. In fact, many inventions that we take for granted today were the source of numerous complaints when they first were brought on the scene.
While many of us have been passive recipients of AI for quite a while (just followed a Netflix recommendation last weekend), I didn’t actively engage with AI, in the form of ChatGPT, until this year. Previously, a friend had introduced me to Jasper for copywriting, specifically supporting social media posts and blog post meta-descriptions for my travel blog. The generic writing style could work for short-form pieces like a brief meta-description but it couldn’t write anything long form. And I could not prompt it to learn from my preferences.
I canceled my subscription with them once I got a look at ChatGPT. The difference here is the ability of the machine to take critique and learn from my prompting. It was through these prompting and tone exercises, as I realized it adapted to my requests and kept turning out better and better products that I began to think about how to use ChatGPT for my travel planning.
A little bit about me: I’ve been traveling globally since the early 90s. And I’ve created my fair share of travel plans. So many in fact that my friends started asking me to help them plan their trips. Where did I get that deal? What flight aggregators have I used? Where was that farmer’s market that looked so amazing in the pictures? Could I help them plan a day or two, or ten, of their itinerary?
As I dove deeper and deeper into helping people create their own unique travel plans I realized a travel blog was the path for me. I’ve been writing about how to get the most out of your travels since 2019, taking what I’ve learned about traveling successfully and the tools that help you create customized adventures, putting the best of what I know out there for others to benefit from as they can.
I’m approaching AI the same way. It is a tool that can help and I’m as excited about its potential as I’ve ever been. Yes, big corp is using it and has been but it’s not just for the business side of the travel industry. Some may feel intimidated by the speed at which AI is growing but you don’t have to be an expert or a large corporation to benefit from what it provides. I’m enjoying playing with it and using it to help others get to know its potential.
In the time I’ve gotten to know the system I see there are key aspects of AI to use that many may be missing out on. These pieces of the AI system are incredibly fun to use and allow us to generate well-curated and customized itineraries that used to take hours in just minutes.
Table of Contents
The 6 Key Aspects of Travel Planning and ChatGPT
When you consider how to incorporate ChatGPT into your travel planning, think about how you planned your first trip. Were you a “figure it out as you go” kind of traveler? Or did you over-plan and try to determine every step of every day before you even got to your destination? There is a lot of trial and error in travel planning. Lots of things to learn about yourself, what you like and don’t like to do that makes a trip enjoyable for you.
It isn’t until you make a few mistakes that you figure out what it is that makes your travels fulfilling. The same is true of working with AI. There will be a bit of trial and error as you work through how to get the best from this system.
Prompting
Let's take a moment to unpack the term 'prompt.' If you're thinking of a nudge or a cue that spurs someone to action, you're not too far off the mark. In the world of AI, a 'prompt' is essentially a piece of instruction or information that we give to the AI to guide its response or action.
Prompting ChatGPT is one-part art and two parts skill (anyone else singing Fort Minor right now?). While initially, the AI market was drowning in people selling or trading email addresses for swipe files of prompts, the prompts that will serve you best are the ones that are customized to your needs.
The process of crafting prompts for AI is developed over time and through context. One will always need context to get the best results. Building context is one of the highlights of travel planning.
Think of this the same way you think about receiving a gift. That act of unwrapping can be as tantalizing as the gift itself. Developing context is a similar sensation. In these early stages, anything is possible! Use your imagination to imagine your ideal as you answer the questions to unwrap what you want to get out of this upcoming adventure.
We are building that context for the travel prompt in three parts:
First, how do you want this trip to make you feel? You are setting a vision for your travels. This is an opportunity to reflect on your travel preferences and helps you refine your goals for this particular adventure.
Do you want to feel adventurous, at ease, bold, spontaneous, relaxed?
Taking the time to write out all of your desired feelings can help bring the vision of your trip into focus.
The second question is what type of activities make you feel that way? Take some time to determine what types of activities or experiences you want to have that will make you feel that way. This is an opportunity for you to apply what you know about yourself and your travel style to the prompt giving ChatGPT more to work with.
- Will you be learning something new?
- Or getting some “me” time so you can remember who you are again?
- Do you want bonding time with family or to strengthen a romantic relationship?
- Or relax to escape the day-to-day grind?
Once you have imagined the ultimate goal, think about the best way to gain that ideal. What activities will help you achieve that?
Finally, where do you want to put your head down at night so that you can wake up the next day and keep that feeling going? Would a homestay in a beautiful neighborhood be your ideal? Do you want satin sheets or just the stars above you that allow you to feel connected to your new location this time around? Gaining clarity on that will help add a final touch to your first travel itinerary prompt.
Here’s an example prompt that puts all those pieces together. After working with a friend to determine her answers to the questions above I entered the following prompt to help her plan an upcoming trip to Italy.
I’ve used ChatGPT for travel both for myself and as a travel planning coach, for clients. It has been an amazing and exciting tool to use. But as always there is a bit of a learning curve and continuing to prompt with the growing context of the traveler’s preferences is an important piece of the process. The human touch is still a factor as we tease out what we want to do, see and even feel during a trip. You will always get a more refined product as you increase the specificity of your prompting.
But with all that being said, don’t be afraid to prompt with ideas that seem subjective and intangible. I want to feel engaged. But engagement can be different for different people. What type of activities will make me feel that way? Tease that out a bit and don’t be afraid to let ChatGPT head in the wrong direction.
I want to feel connected to a location, a community. What creates a connection? What type of experiences will help me do that? Taking the time to tease out these personalized nuances helps provide context to an AI. You can always let it know when you don’t agree with a choice and that’s part of the fun of it all. That feedback in turn provides a better response.
The three questions are simply a kick-off point to develop a deeper conversation with ChatGPT.
Iterative
Working with AI to create a fully customized itinerary, just like planning for any trip, is a process. Given the context above ChatGPT spit out a pretty decent first draft of an itinerary but some of the offerings were generic.
Once you have initiated the process you can continue to flush out more of what you want to see with refined details. Analyze what ChatGPT has provided and think of it as a first draft. What elements of that first attempt resonated best and what needs more work?
Here you are teasing out what you really want to do and the more clarity you get around that the better! Re-prompting to zero in on elements of the itinerary that sparked the most interest can help refine it.
Here’s an example of how we focused on one aspect of the itinerary to get a more refined response. These are actual prompts I’ve used so please excuse the typos.
Refining AI outputs as you go can be a source of satisfaction, joy and is full of surprises and learning.
Bias
You may think of AI as just lines of code, devoid of any personal inclinations. But the truth is, AI can sometimes be biased, and that's because it learns from data provided by humans, who can be biased, even unintentionally. There are a few types of biases that can creep into AI, and it's essential to understand them to ensure fairness.
Data bias occurs when the data used to train the AI system is skewed or unrepresentative. Consider a hypothetical travel AI trained predominantly on data from luxury travel magazines and high-end travel websites. Such an AI might over-prioritize expensive hotels, gourmet dining, and premium experiences in its recommendations because it "thinks" these are the norm for all travelers.
Following up on this response with a bit of research I discovered a lack of rooms available at the discussed price. So this required re-prompting:
Remember, the AI doesn’t know us personally, so the prompts we give it are the only way it knows what we want. The more detailed and precise we are, the better our AI friend can help us plan the perfect trip.
I’ve learned to watch for bias in the work I develop for the blog as well. For example, I was in the process of creating a quiz for my readers and I recognized that some of the answer choices were biased toward a certain income level.
Reading the product as a consumer I felt the answer choices were limiting who would feel included in this activity. So now I’ve got the satisfaction of working toward something more inclusive, teasing out what I really want the AI service to provide me.
I provided examples of the bias to ChatGPT and prompted it to revise regarding income.
While bias is not a good thing, discovering it makes me focus on my readers and potential partners in travel planning, recognizing barriers to travel and how I might support more inclusivity in the planning process.
We have to consider how we prompt ChatGPT and what we might include in questions and context to support inclusivity. AI is no better than the data it’s collected and the questions we ask to generate responses. So it is on us to provide enough context and critical feedback in order to get products we are willing to use ourselves or put in front of others.
Silent Partner
Treating AI as a collaborative tool rather than a replacement can make the process fun and fruitful.
Here are two ways you can use ChatGPT to easily improve your travel planning.
- Developing a first draft of your itinerary - as you’ve seen from the prompting above this is one of my favorite ways to engage with travel planning. In doing this for both myself and others there is something so rewarding about watching the lightbulb go on for travelers as they tease out what they like and don’t like about that first draft. The engagement process is well underway at that point
- Streamlining travel planning time - I like to feel productive and with the number of things I have going on, a full-time job as well as a full-time travel blog as well as planning all our family travel, I want to be able to have my time used as efficiently as possible.
Satisfaction
The joy derived from using AI with unique context has positively impacted the travel planning process for both me and others I’ve worked with on travel planning.
Here’s a process I have used that has helped me get the most out of my planning time with ChatGPT:
Step 1: Set Your Preferences First
You feed your AI assistant with your preferences and interests, your detailed prompt with context like I’ve highlighted above. You might say, "I want to explore Japan in two weeks, taking in the best of its urban and rural landscapes. I'm also a big fan of Japanese cuisine and historical architecture. I’d like to focus on homestays"
Step 2: AI Proposes an Itinerary
With your preferences in mind, the AI would then sift through vast amounts of data. It checks flight prices, climate data, hotel reviews, tourist hotspot ratings, restaurant reviews, and even data on cultural and historic sites. It then drafts a suggested itinerary. Let's say it recommends you start in Tokyo, then Kyoto, followed by a day in Hiroshima, and finally, some time at Okinawa and enjoying Kerama Shoto National Park.
Step 3: Refine the Itinerary
At this point, you can review the AI's suggestion. You might find that you want more time to explore Kyoto's temples or that you'd rather experience rural life in Hokkaido instead of Okinawa. You refine your prompts, telling the AI about these adjustments.
Step 4: AI Refines the Itinerary
Your AI travel planning assistant adjusts accordingly, shifting around itinerary dates, updating hotel possibilities, and even suggesting a Sushi-making class in Tokyo, which aligns with your interest in Japanese cuisine.
This iterative process goes on until you're happy with the entire plan, and there you have it – your personalized, AI-created travel itinerary.
Now, let's delve into an exciting aspect of AI - machine learning. You see, your AI assistant isn't just a static program. It's continually learning and improving. This learning happens as it interacts with more data and receives feedback. For instance, in the process of planning your Japan trip, the AI might learn that you have a penchant for sushi and a preference for homestays over chain resorts.
As you use the AI assistant more, it better understands your travel style and preferences. So, the next time you plan a trip, it already has a head start on what you might like.
Possibilities
As you begin to play around with AI and travel planning, know that you are not alone in your learning curve. ChatGPT can be your new travel buddy, ready to enhance how you explore the world.
AI’s potential in the travel industry is expansive. And we're not just talking about the convenience of automated check-ins or intelligent chatbots (although, those are pretty cool too!). We're looking at a future where AI can curate personalized travel experiences down to the minutest detail as guided by your own prompting and preference.
Imagine an AI system that learns your preferences as smoothly as your favorite barista learns your daily coffee order. What if this became your Cheers and ChatGPT yelled out your name when you opened the door?
This AI can adjust and suggest destinations, find deals, and even suggest future travel based on your past behavior and current preferences. And let's not even get started on the potential for reducing travel-related stress. No time for long hours of planning or sifting through mounds of research? AI-powered systems have got you covered.
The take-home message? ChatGPT is poised to be an efficient travel planning buddy, transforming the industry into a more responsive, personalized, and inclusive space. So jump on board, because the future of personalized travel planning promises to be an exciting and fun journey!