AI for travel planning: 102 real cases with prompts

Plan a summer road trip by answering questions one at a time with ChatGPT

In a Tom's Guide road-trip feature, Elton Jones shares an all-in-one prompt (written with ChatGPT's help) that has the chatbot ask about starting point, budget, trip length, travel style, food, music, routes, lodging and companions, then build an itinerary, driving schedule, budget, packing list, food stops, scenic stops and rain plans. It offers prompts only and doesn't report a finished trip.

Plan a family road trip with playground stops and a dog-friendly hotel with Grok

Jeff Binek, a gym owner in Dublin, Ohio, asked Grok to plan a two-day drive from Columbus to Hilton Head via Charlotte with three kids under four and a dog, stopping every 2.5 hours at safe playgrounds near gas stations. They say it gave precise timing and distances, gas prices, three park options per stop and a dog-friendly hotel, and the family reversed the same plan on the way home.

Shortlist cheap, quiet places to stay for a holiday weekend with Gemini

For a New Year's trip to Oxford, MakeUseOf's Jack Mitchell asked Gemini for 5 hotels or B&Bs in or around the city that were cheapest and not overcrowded over the holiday. They say Gemini shortlisted places factoring in seasonal crowds and typical costs, and they then compared travel times, tolls and fuel or transit costs in Google Maps before choosing.

Plan a vacation with flight, hotel and busy-week checks in Gemini

A Hacker News commenter says they've been using Gemini to plan a vacation and finds it surprisingly useful: it can look up flights from Google Flights and hotels from Maps, and knows about busy weeks at the destination. They add that you have to hope it isn't hallucinating, which they see as safer for trips than for healthcare.

Plan a family Disneyland trip with Claude Code and Skills

The poster planned a family Disneyland trip using Claude Code as the agent, Claude Skills for research, planning, tracking and journaling, and a simple companion web app for itineraries and maps.

Plan a five-day city trip with flights in Google AI Mode's Canvas

ZDNet's tester asked Google's AI Mode trip-planning tool to plan a five-day New York City trip focused on historical sites and museums, then asked it to add flights; it researched Charlotte-to-NYC options and added a Flights tab with three major-airline choices to the itinerary. The tester says everything was well organized in Canvas, with Google reviews alongside each stop.

Find nonstop flights and a hotel under $400 a night with ChatGPT agent

BKA Content's Greg Secrist asked ChatGPT agent for nonstop Salt Lake City to Las Vegas flights for October 8–11 plus hotel rooms under $400 per night. It worked across Delta, Expedia and Booking.com but struggled with JavaScript-heavy pages and date pickers, sometimes looping or freezing; after almost nine minutes it returned some options they say they could have found manually in half the time.

Book a car rental with ChatGPT Atlas agent mode

The poster asked ChatGPT Atlas in agent mode to book a car rental and says it did, shown in a short demo video.

Save 20 restaurants from an article to a Google Maps list with Atlas

ChatGPT Atlas agent picked 20 restaurants from an article and added them to a new saved-places list in the poster's Google Maps account; the poster called it slow but an excellent result.

Add flights from a confirmation email to Google Calendar with Comet

From a flight confirmation email, Comet Assistant opened Google Calendar and created entries with airports and flight numbers for a NJ–London–Dubai–NJ trip, but the entries didn't span the full flight times and the poster had to fix them by hand and re-prompt for the check-in reminders.

Find the cheapest Hamburg–Copenhagen train with ChatGPT agent

Asked (in German) to book the cheapest Hamburg–Copenhagen train for September, ChatGPT agent found a €63.26 fare after about ten minutes on the Deutsche Bahn site, then asked the author to log in; Comet was faster (3:40) but booked legs separately for €70.94.

Poster says:€63.26 vs €70.94 from Comet

Plan a points-funded family holiday and book dinner with ChatGPT agent (partial)

For a points-funded family holiday plan, ChatGPT agent built a decent deck but spent 15 minutes formatting slides; it couldn't book the romantic dinner.

Check a hotel price with ChatGPT agent (wrong town)

Asked to check a hotel's price with its town clearly stated, ChatGPT agent looked up a same-named hotel in another town, and the poster notes this wouldn't have been obvious from the reply.

Build a saved Google Maps list of a city's best restaurants with ChatGPT agent

Frank Andrade asked ChatGPT agent to find the best restaurants in the city they were about to visit and save them as a new Google Maps list with notes on signature dishes. It picked 10 restaurants, collected their signature dishes, paused for them to enter their Google login, then created and saved the list with notes; it took about 23 minutes.

Compare 7-day Bali itineraries from ChatGPT and Grok

An X user asked both Grok and ChatGPT for a 7-day solo travel itinerary to Bali and says ChatGPT did a better job, with tables and accurate breakdowns of the expenses the poster expected.

Plan a toddler-friendly San Diego itinerary with Gemini Deep Research

Gemini Deep Research produced a San Diego spring-break itinerary covering the zoo, SeaWorld and Balboa Park built around a daily nap for a two-year-old; the poster called the report insightful and detailed.

Plan a travel itinerary with map-ready stops, food and restroom finds with Grok

An X user recommends Grok for planning travel itineraries, saying it can create a timeline, give written driving locations to plug into any map app, offer restaurant suggestions and find public toilet locations, and that it created an itinerary the poster calls amazing when asked what to do.

Rank safe cities for solo travel with Grok DeepSearch

Asked for the safest destinations for solo travelers in 2025, Grok DeepSearch returned a table of cities with Global Peace Index scores, places to visit and solo-travel tips; TechWiser's reviewer said it stood out for structure and focus on solo travel.

Plan a 3-day Tokyo tech trip with a budget in USD and yen with Grok

In Tom's Guide's ChatGPT-vs-Grok test, Ryan Morrison asked both for a 3-day Tokyo technology trip with hotels, transport, a robot restaurant and a budget in USD and yen; they judged Grok's itinerary more focused, realistic and detailed, with a fuller budget breakdown.

Plan a 10-day Malaysia trip with flights and hotels with Gemini

Hulry's writer asked Gemini to plan a 10-day trip from Bangalore to Malaysia for two at a moderate pace, low-to-mid budget with hotels under ₹5,000 a night. Gemini returned a decent itinerary and, using Google Flights data, flight options with accurate timings and pricing, but it mixed up the travel dates while searching for flights. The article says the whole plan took under 15 minutes.

File Thailand Digital Arrival Cards for five travelers with ChatGPT agent

ChatGPT agent filled Thailand Digital Arrival Cards for 5 people (about an hour / 16 credits); the poster verified the preview and swapped in real passport numbers before submitting.

Hunt last-minute holiday flights with multiple agents (failure case)

Claude Opus 4.5, Gemini 3 Pro and ChatGPT agent mode only matched a manual Google Flights search and were too slow as cheap fares vanished; the humans beat them by about 15%.

Compare browser agents on a vacation Airbnb search

On the same Airbnb search, ChatGPT Atlas agent mode and Comet each found properties in about 5 minutes, Claude's extension took 10 minutes to find the first, and MiniMax Agent ran over an hour without giving links.

Plan St. Simons Island restaurants with ChatGPT agent

ChatGPT agent mode produced a dining guide for a 4-day St. Simons Island trip organized by meal and price, and the author ate at 4 restaurants from the list and liked them all.