Quick LinksHow I Used ChatGPT to Plan My Vacation What ChatGPT Did Right What ChatGPT Got Wrong Should You Use ChatGPT to Plan Your Vacation?
AI can do many things, but can it plan a proper vacation? I recently took a trip to Porto, Portugal, and found that while ChatGPT can bring some positives, they're rapidly outweighed by the negatives.
How I Used ChatGPT to Plan My Vacation
I've never used ChatGPT before, but my friends have -- and one of them uses it all the time. On a trip to Porto in Portugal, I was intrigued enough to use ChatGPT to explore the city.
None of us had been to Porto, so this was a fresh opportunity. I'd been to Lisbon when I was much younger, as had a couple of my pals, so we knew the sort of trip we were in for. That is an excessively hot few days with friendly locals and plenty of pastel de natas.
There's a lot to do in Porto, however, and we hit a couple of snags along the way, so we leaned on ChatGPT as our guide.
ChatGPT is perhaps the best-known AI tool. It's essentially a data aggregate, meaning it's been trained on a vast proportion of all the information available on the internet and can present results immediately. It has many applications, but I've always been wary of AI. Asking ChatGPT to make an itinerary for our trip was an intriguing yet worrying idea.
Note that we didn't use it all the time. We went to Porto with a few events booked in by necessity. Still, there were plenty of times we needed some guidance. Here's how ChatGPT did.
What ChatGPT Did Right Close
So, what did we actually use ChatGPT for? More than even planning places to visit, we used it for day-to-day guidance. That's partly because we'd already booked, for instance, a tour of the Porto football stadium, simply because you have to -- walk-in tickets aren't available. Similarly, a boat trip can be booked while in Porto, but you get a better guide choice when you buy tickets in advance.
Still, we did have a full day free plus spare mornings or afternoons, so we asked ChatGPT for some tourist attractions.
Porto is beautiful, but there aren't loads of tourist hotspots. That can be one of the positives of the city, but it can also mean you get some downtime, where there's not a great deal to do apart from wandering around the shopping stalls or along the Douro River. We'd hoped ChatGPT could help us out, and it did.
It recommended The Chocolate Story, which we enjoyed immensely. It suggested the best place to get the Portuguese sandwich favorite, Francesinha. An incredible number of restaurants and cafes served them, so ChatGPT helped sort the wheat from the chaff. We loved strolling around the Ribeira District, which ChatGPT had highlighted.
Aside from attraction recommendations, however, we relied on ChatGPT to help us get around the city and learn more about it. This included where to keep luggage safe on our last day: we had to check out of our accommodation in the morning, but our flight home was in the evening, so if not for this, we would've had to carry our bags around Porto all day.
ChatGPT also suggested pharmacies that were open longer hours when one of our party fell ill. That was a great help (though one of the places suggested couldn't give out medicine; it was more of a chemist than a pharmacy).
On top of that, ChatGPT gave us handy directions to more obscure locations, which was particularly useful in a city with lots of little alleyways to navigate. Another positive was its recommendation of Bolt, an Uber-like service that would ferry us around the city when somewhere was too far to walk.
What ChatGPT Got Wrong
ChatGPT doesn't really understand practicalities or at least reacts to limited data without inferring anything. It also just repeats what it finds online, which is often biased information.
Our free day started bright and breezy, so we headed out without our coats. We soon regretted this after a storm amassed overhead. We quickly turned to ChatGPT to ask for suggestions on what to do in Porto on a rainy day. The results were disappointing.
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Chiefly, it recommended a trip to the Livraria Lello, a beautiful, elaborate, gothic-style bookshop at the city's heart. It would've been a solid idea, except this store is hugely popular, so much so that there's always a long queue outside. It's owing to the public thinking it inspired JK Rowling's Harry Potter novels, a claim that's since been debunked. Nonetheless, it's perpetually busy -- whether down to Rowling or not, it's heartening to see a bookshop so popular.
Ironically, we'd asked ChatGPT for such a suggestion while looking at the very queue it'd told us to join. Everyone in that queue was hiding under umbrellas or looking downcast in the pouring rain. This certainly wasn't a good suggestion in terrible weather.
ChatGPT can't filter suggestions particularly well. It doesn't verify what it finds online. Right now, that might be a tall order, but if we want AI to continue to evolve, it needs to be choosy with what it tells users.
For instance, I wanted to visit a comic book shop in Porto. I love collecting comics in foreign languages, so this was a must. It suggested Livraria Lello again, though at least acknowledged that it's not a comic store per se. Before those, ChatGPT proposed a place whose main store was in Lisbon (over 310km away) but which ran occasional pop-up stores in Porto.
Granted, its first listing was for Mundo Fantasma, a main shop in the Shopping Center BrasÃlia, but it missed off an underappreciated gem: the Livraria Timtimportimtim. This is a store set up to celebrate Belgian favorite Tintin, but it also includes a vast array of popular and obscure comics and merchandise.
It's a stunning, wonderful place -- yet ChatGPT had buried it in favor of more run-of-the-mill places.
Should You Use ChatGPT to Plan Your Vacation?
What did I learn from using AI during my vacation? My main takeaway is that ChatGPT can be useful, but only selectively.
The biggest takeaway is that any positive aspects can be found elsewhere. Bolt is advertised everywhere. Your nose and eyes can guide you to good restaurants. A simple Google search will tell you about attractions and let you book tickets. That's without talking about what to do if ChatGPT isn't actually working.
ChatGPT will guide you around a destination by focusing solely on what's popular. If you want to get under the skin of wherever you're visiting, to really understand it as a local, using the internet is a better bet. You could ask ChatGPT for hidden gems, but its search capacity is ultimately underwhelming.
Saying that, ChatGPT can help with day-to-day things. If you want to use AI to help plan your vacation, do so in advance. Prepare for rainy days. Look for events and create a rough itinerary before you leave. Prepare a plan for using public transport.
ChatGPT can be used to enhance your vacation, but don't rely solely on it.
