How people are using AI to plan their summer vacations
- Travel insiders say AI and ChatGPT are '100% changing the industry'
- Machine learning allows for customized guest experiences
- Villabruna: 'It's not perfect yet, but I think it's a good start'
maylen
(NewsNation) — Could artificial intelligence plan your summer vacation? There are plenty of people working in the travel industry that seem to think so.
Travel insiders say planning a vacation could be easier than ever with the use of AI and ChatGPT.
“It’s 100% changing the industry. We don’t 100% know how,” said Adrian Villabruna, the founder of AI Adventures, a ChatGPT-powered customized travel service.
Villabruna lives in Barcelona, Spain, but for the sake of this story, he’s using his own site to plan a vacation to Miami, Florida.
Prompted with keywords like “a nice beach,” “good food,” “going with a friend” and “history,” the site required only five minutes to provide a list of recommended places.
The first recommendation powered by ChatGPT was South Beach. No surprise there, since it’s a tourist destination.
But what about good food? The travel service suggested Little Havanna less than 10 miles from South Beach. AI Adventures recommended Versailles, a world-famous Cuban restaurant on Eighth Street.
As for Villabruna’s history prompt, ChatGPT proposed Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.
“It’s not perfect yet, but I think it’s a good start,” Villabruna said of the technology.
Villabruna said more people have been reaching out to him about using the technology for travel.
AI uses your answers from a series of questions, builds a personalized profile and creates an experience catered specifically to you. It also eliminates the endless number of recommendations and cuts out all the searches online.
“Using machine learning, it could then provide you with a customized guest experience, which in the travel industry could include your destination, where you’re going to be staying at the destination itself, how you’re going to get there,” said Dale Gomez, with Florida International University’s Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.
Companies say ChatGPT-powered travel services are still fairly limited. They won’t know things like current airfare because the data from AI is based on historical information up to 2021. Also, the chatbots aren’t able to make reservations at restaurants yet.
Still, for the founder of AI Adventures, this is a head start into the future.
“Who is not adopting today will miss out,” Villabruna said.
Because AI is still in its early stages, travelers will have to do most of the legwork for now. But some companies including Expedia are integrating AI chatbots into their booking process.
