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How to Use the AI Trip Planner on Booking.com
Amanda Smith is a freelance journalist and writer. She reports on culture, society, human interest and technology. Her stories hold a mirror to society, reflecting both its malaise and its beauty. Amanda's work has been published in National Geographic, The Guardian, Business Insider, Vice, News Corp, Singapore Airlines, Travel + Leisure, and Food & Wine. Amanda is an Australian living in the cultural center of gravity that is New York City. The fun of travel doesn't just start when you board the plane. Your journey really begins during the planning process, where anticipation and adventure awaits you. Scoping out destinations, comparing prices and the best times to travel, planning an itinerary and getting personalized recommendations are all part of the fun -- and now it's all easier and faster to do with artificial intelligence. Booking.com's AI Trip Planner -- as seen in the Super Bowl ad starring The Muppets -- is designed to be like having a travel agent at your fingertips. It can help with research, analyzing reviews and providing tailored trip suggestions. It can even help you work out questions like: "Should I spend a month in the Mediterranean or backpack around Bali?" The Booking.com AI Trip Planner uses a combination of the platform's existing machine-learning models (such as GenAI Orchestrator) and OpenAI's ChatGPT API. The planner launched in June 2023 but has had various updates since its release. It has evolved from answering general questions to now being able to give you very specific, personalized advice. The AI Trip Planner is free to use and available via the Booking.com mobile app. Here's everything you need to know about how to use it. If you use Booking.com or have in the past, sign into your account on the app. This way, AI Trip Planner can access your past searches and travel history. Here are the first few steps: You can use the AI travel agent to either inspire a future trip or help plan something that's in the works. What's cool about using a chatbot for trip planning is you can prompt it with your wants, needs and budget, just like a human travel agent uses what they know about their clients to match suitable destination, hotel and flight options. As with all AI tools, be wary not to outsource important decisions to these models. The Booking.com AI Trip Planner is still in beta mode, meaning it's still in its early days and could be prone to mistakes. Think of these tools as add-ons to your trip planning, not your only source of information -- at least until they mature. Let's test out a couple of possible trips: Start with a prompt like this: "I want to travel to Paris for a week between June-August. I will be visiting with my wife. We prefer to stay outside of the tourist traps but still have easy access to attractions. We love coffee, food, people-watching and wandering by foot. I've already been to Paris twice, but my wife has never been. Can you provide the best flight prices from Newark/New York and accommodation options around $150 USD per night?" It came back with some information and hotel options. I responded with extra context around our accommodation preferences -- more boutique hotel listings with a minimum of an 8-star rating. While I've had my fair share of hostel stays, you couldn't pay me to stay in a dorm these days. It came back with a luxury hotel option of $1,817 per night. My heart says yes but my wallet says no. I liked how it provided a few alternatives that either had high ratings or were close to my nightly budget. I clicked on each one to check out the photos and location. I quickly fell in love with the most expensive one (not surprised), on the opposite side of the river to the Louvre. Oui, oui! Once you select a hotel, you can ask property-specific questions. Just click on Ask a question in the hotel card. I asked if the hotel I like is too close to all the tourists and what's special about the location. Here's what the AI Trip Planner said: Because I'm a professional people-watcher, I asked which Parisian café I should try first. It gave me five suggestions, with descriptions on what they each feature and serve. Again, do your independent research, because I ran a Google search on one of these cafés and it's temporarily closed. The property-specific questions is by far the coolest feature of the Booking.com AI Trip Planner. You can get really granular with your search. Now, let's start a new chat for a new trip. You can also use the AI Trip Planner to give you destination ideas. For example, "What are some good winter destinations in the US to go skiing for a week? A budget, family-friendly trip for four." It gave me some options, so I followed up with a note about wanting a destination that was convenient to reach from New York, and it came back with Killington, Park City and Vail. It also explained why these are good locations for ski trips, noting the family-friendly activities, cultural experiences, ski terrain and downtown areas. It's good to ask follow-up questions in the chat, like "Where is Killington?" or, "Where is the best place to ski on the east coast?" Killington kept coming up so I asked it to create a customized itinerary, including places to stay and good restaurants. You can adjust what you don't like, then have it generate a new itinerary. For example, my first one was generic, so I asked it to be specific about the restaurants to visit and activities to do. It's an iterative but enjoyable process for planning travel. Booking.com's AI Trip Planner stands out because of the platform's many years of reviews and ratings that can inform its fast results.
CNET
Sun, 2 Mar, 4:16 PM UTC
Travel Smarter: Book Cheap Flights with Google's Gemini AI
Travel More, Spend Less: Gemini AI Makes Booking Budget-Friendly Travel Easy Are you fantasizing about your next vacation but don't want to search for cheap flights? We understand! The constant tab-changing and price-refreshing truly seem like a part-time job. What if there were an easier way? Introducing Google's Gemini AI, your new secret weapon for finding better deals on flights. It's like having a really smart travel friend work for you to find the best flight deals so that you can focus on all the fun stuff related to your trip!
Analytics Insight
Tue, 8 Apr, 10:11 PM UTC
Google's New AI-Powered Travel Features
Summary Google's AI Travel features provide trip planning assistance, tailored itineraries, and ways to save ideas easily. Gemini, Google's AI assistant, helps brainstorm travel ideas and plans while respecting privacy concerns. Utilize Google Hotels to track hotel prices, turn screenshots into organized travel lists, and use Google Lens as a tour guide. Tired of having to open 20 tabs just to plan one trip? Google's new AI travel features might just be your next favorite travel assistant -- and it won't argue over the itinerary. Here's how the search giant's latest AI tools can take the pain out of your holiday plans, leaving you to simply enjoy the trip. AI Overviews in Search If you've used Google search in the past year, you've likely come across AI Overviews when you do a search on Google. The AI, powered by Google's Gemini, reviews your query and captures relevant information to summarize an answer for you, along with providing the source links to explore deeper. Google states that it's a way to find information faster and easier. Related 6 Best Gemini Features to Try on Your Google Pixel 9 You'll love them all. Posts 1 A new improvement in AI Overviews in Search allows you to get trip ideas for distinct regions and countries. Previously, you could get trip ideas for mostly bigger cities, but this change allows you to plan your whole itinerary no matter where you're going. Here's a prompt to try out next time you're planning travel: "Create an itinerary for Miami with a focus on food." Once you hit enter, it generates a day-to-day itinerary with Google Maps links to the places it suggests, which you'll be able to explore further. You'll also get recommendations on how to get there, with the AI showing you a few flight options, beginning with the cheapest option. Close There are two ways you can save this itinerary. The first way is to "Export" the information, which allows you to copy the text, save it as an email, save to Google Docs, or export to Google Maps. You can also click "Save" next to it, which saves it to your Google account interests page. You can only see this when you're logged in, and you can see everything you've saved from the Google ecosystem from here. Close This feature isn't just limited to travel itineraries. Here are some other prompt ideas you can try when planning travel: "What are some unique experiences in [city or town]"? "What is the best time to visit [country/region] for the festivals? (or good weather)?" "What is the culture like in [country]?" "What are the transportation options within [City A] to [City B]?" This saves a ton of time since you no longer have to navigate a hundred different travel blogs or search on Instagram to find things to do. Google Maps is useful for the area you're in, sure, but you'll get a lot more information and much more quickly when you have AI doing all your research for you. If you don't like AI Overviews on Google Search, you can turn it off. Google is still rolling out AI Overviews in more languages and regions, so if you don't see AI overviews on Google when searching, it may just not be available to you yet. You can always navigate to Gemini, Google's AI chatbot assistant, which can do the same thing as well. Using Gemini for Travel Inspiration If you're not sure where to go or traveling with people who want to do different things, fear not! We now have AI that can act as your personal travel assistant and help you brainstorm ideas and plan your trip. This goes a bit further than the AI Overview in Google search, as it allows you to ask back-and-forth questions to help your travel plan. Close Some prompt ideas include: "Help me brainstorm what country to visit next. This is what I like to do [enter your favorite activities] and see [add what attractions or things you might want to see], and I'll be travelling [solo/as a couple/family of four]. My budget for flights is [add budget]." "Help me plan a romantic honeymoon for two people. We are in [age range] and our budget is [add budget] for flights and hotels." "What are the top 5 Mexican restaurants in [add town/city] that have at least a 4-star rating on Google and serve vegetarian options?" You can remove the square bracket and customize it to what you need. But what about privacy? Well, if you're worried, you can always use Gemini without logging in. Although, it won't save the chat conversation if you want to return to it another day. You can even explore Gemini's Gems feature, which allows you to tailor the AI to your specific goals. So you can set it up to act as your AI travel guide and planner. This feature is now available to all, for free. Hotel Price Tracking You may have already used Google Flights to track prices on flights and get notified. But did you know that you can now do the same for hotels? Google Hotels has a new feature where you can toggle "Track hotel prices" for your location and dates. Just make sure that you're logged in to your Gmail account so you can receive email updates. One cool thing is that the price alerts are very specific, so if you're searching for a hotel within specific search filters, you'll receive emails on price drops on those very search parameters. So they aren't just general price drops on the destinations. According to Google, to update the tracker for the destination, you can turn it off and back on with your update dates or filters. I don't know about you, but this is a feature I'll start using before I plan my next trip. You can now use hotel price tracking on mobile and desktop browsers, no matter where you are in the world. You can open up Google Hotels in incognito mode to ensure that you're getting the best price for your accommodation -- incognito is no match for those pesky cookies. Turn Your Screenshots Into Travel Lists If you're planning a trip, and you're anything like me, you probably have a bunch of screenshots saved on your phone. Whether that's from social media or random travel blogs, they can quickly add up. Fortunately, there's now a solution and an easy way to organize this, without having to forget. According to Google, Gemini now has capabilities in Google Maps that can automatically identify places that are shown in your screenshots. In other words, it can turn your screenshots into lists that you can share with your friends and family before you travel. Here's a short GIF from Google showing you how it's done: As of this writing the feature is currently available in the U.S. in English on iOS, and coming soon to Android. Use Google Lens as a Tour Guide If you've seen the colorful camera icon next to the Google search bar (or on the app) and aren't sure what it's used for, you're missing out. Google Lens allows you to generate information just from taking a photo of something. This is especially useful when you're traveling and want to know more about what you're looking at. For example, if you're in a museum and want to learn more about a piece of history. Or perhaps the local cuisine of the country you're traveling to doesn't have a menu in a language you speak. You can simply take a photo and get it translated using Google Lens. While in Rome, I used Google Lens to scan a restaurant and discovered that it was frequently visited by celebrities and was known for its authentic desserts. So you'll never know what you'll discover. There are so many other incredible uses for Google Lens that go beyond these examples. It's also AI-powered, so you'll receive an AI overview just like a standard Google search result. Looks like planning your next getaway just got a lot easier -- Google's AI does the legwork, so you can skip the stress and get to the fun.
How-To Geek
Wed, 7 May, 6:43 PM UTC
Five New Travel Tools to Save Time and Money This Summer
Long before there was ChatGPT, you'd have to visit an actual brick-and-mortar travel agency to craft and book your dream itinerary. This month, travel agency Fora has brought that nostalgic experience back to the modern era with a pop-up location -- open through May 29 -- in New York City. It's more like Soho House than the old AAA mainstays where you'd pick up road maps, with luxury hotel brands and tourism boards carrying out elaborate activations while Fora agents brainstorm vacation ideas with clients at a communal workstation. Yet the reality is that most travelers this summer won't talk to human travel agents face-to-face, or even online, as they plan their trips. Rather, generative artificial intelligence tools will increasingly play a role in helping us decide where to go. A 2024 survey from global consulting firm Oliver Wyman LLC showed more than 41% of travelers from the US and Canada had recently used this emerging technology for trip inspiration and design -- up 30% from a year earlier. (One travel agency is embracing that inevitability, using AI to help turn your emotions into itineraries.)
Bloomberg
Thu, 15 May, 12:19 PM UTC
Airial: Ex-Meta Engineers Launch AI-Powered Travel Planning Tool
Former Meta engineers create Airial, an AI-driven travel planning tool that automates the entire trip planning process, from brainstorming to booking, offering personalized itineraries based on user preferences.
3 Sources
Tue, 1 Jul, 4:03 PM UTC
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