Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping every industry, and travel is no exception. You’re likely hearing about how AI tools like ChatGPT can help you dream up, plan, and book your next vacation. However, smart travelers should tread with caution. AI presents remarkable possibilities — but also pitfalls, which can include overpromising, “hallucinating,” and simply dispensing bad travel advice. Depending on how you use it, AI can help turn your travel dreams into a reality…or a disappointing headache.
We’re using the term “AI” generically, to refer to ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, and the many other consumer AI tools at your disposal today. While similar, all have their own strengths, weaknesses, and quirks, which can ebb and flow as each one evolves. But if you ask them for help planning a trip, they’ll all promise you the world: finding the best deals on accommodations, constructing your ideal itinerary from scratch, booking the cheapest and fastest flights, and even telling you where and when to go.
With seemingly endless capabilities, AI lulls you into believing that it’s the perfect all-in-one trip-planning tool. But as we’ll see, it can be prone to problems. Our general advice: Use AI for small tasks and big-picture information gathering…but not as the final word. When something as precious as your trip is on the line, anything you glean from AI should be double-checked with a trusted, up-to-date, human-vetted source — such as a good guidebook, thorough online research of primary sources, or advice from a well-traveled friend.
Using AI for Trip Planning
In practice, a chatty AI bot can be a fun and efficient tool for taking care of low-stakes tasks that could help your trip — but have no chance of significantly harming it: translation and language assistance; budgeting help and currency conversions; packing tips based on weather forecasts; souvenir ideas; a quick scan of which current West End shows have received the best reviews. The main advice is to be clear and specific in your prompts; AI does best when it understands exactly what you’re looking for. If your first attempt is disappointing, try again and refine your question.
If using AI for higher-stakes tasks — such as researching flights, accommodations, and key logistics of your itinerary — be aware of its hazards and limitations. AI really, really wants to solve your problem, and is reluctant to admit when it can’t. Because of this, it can disregard facts in favor of presenting you with a solution. For travelers, seeking help from AI can feel like asking a proud local on the street for directions: Whether or not they actually know the answer, they’ll enthusiastically point this way or that — eager to send you in their idea of the right direction. Similarly, if AI doesn’t know the answer, it will very confidently provide you with a made-up one.
For example, we asked Copilot to find and book an off-season direct flight between Gdańsk and Athens, a route that exists only seasonally. It proudly presented a “direct” flight that actually required a lengthy layover in Frankfurt. Another time, we asked it for directions to a bus station in Budapest. It spit out the name of the right Metró stop…but on the wrong Metró line.
In addition to the all-purpose tools like Copilot, many travel websites have built-in “agentic” AI robots (like Priceline’s “Penny”). These are generally more focused and effective, but they can still make costly mistakes — and have even provided false information about the company’s own policies (as was the case with Air Canada’s AI mishap). Critics also worry that AI-driven pricing could lead to higher costs overall. Ultimately, it’s smart to always double-check your options with a quick manual search.
Another AI pitfall is how commonly it invents false information out of whole cloth — a phenomenon known as “hallucination.” These tools work by mining millions and millions of words and data points in seconds, which can result in locating a few phrase combinations that sound accurate…but simply aren’t. This makes it risky, for example, to rely solely on AI to help you plan an itinerary: It might send you to a sight that’s closed or have a poor understanding of how much time or distance is required for various activities (as recently happened with an AI-planned Paris trip).
And remember: Since AI mines the internet for its content, its search is only as good as the sources it’s scanning. If there are errors, outdated information, or confusingly worded opinions online, it might simply be slurped up and presented as fact. Garbage in…garbage out.
In general, AI often misfires on recommendations that require a human sensibility. A BBC report covered two travelers who were stranded atop a mountain because they asked ChatGPT to help them plan a sunset mountain hike. It confidently told them to leave at 3:00 p.m., which was perfect for reaching the summit for sunset — but not perfect for getting back down…since the mountain’s lifts closed just after.
Other travelers have reported a “commercial bias” in AI-generated travel guidance. In short, companies are figuring out ways to manipulate underlying algorithms and cleverly keyword to push their content artificially higher in AI results. Because of this, some products and experiences are presented to you not because they’re the most accurate or “best,” but because their marketing team was the shrewdest.
AI-Generated Content
It’s one thing when you know that you’re dealing with AI and can take necessary precautions. But increasingly, generative AI is creating travel content that looks indistinguishable from human-written content…until you look more closely.
At Rick Steves’ Europe, we’ve always prided ourselves on our handcrafted content. But we also wondered how AI would handle what we do. So, as an experiment, we asked ChatGPT to generate an article on Cádiz, Spain. The results seemed pleasing enough at first glance. But digging deeper, we found many problems.
For example, in a flowery description of the Barrio del Pópulo, it used the phrase Here, flamenco pulses quietly. Any real-life traveler knows that flamenco is many things…but “quiet” is certainly not one of them. In the very next sentence, the AI suggested dropping into the venerable La Cava flamenco club. But there’s one problem: La Cava is far across town from the Barrio del Pópulo. In the end, ChatGPT’s effort wasn’t just bad writing — it was bad advice. It lacked a human touch.
These examples might be easy to miss, to a reader who hasn’t been to Cádiz. And that’s why this experiment validated our dedication to content created by travelers, for travelers, through traveling. Even with all the shortcut tools at your disposal today, it’s still best to entrust your precious trip to human beings who have actually been there and can describe what it’s really like, provide trustworthy opinions, and flag unexpected hiccups. Especially in the age of AI, we’re more committed than ever to equipping you with straight-from-the-rucksack travel advice.
Of course, many other travel content companies have long since gone all-in on AI. That “Top 10” article you’re planning your trip around may have been entirely generated by a robot. And even that well-established guidebook may have hired a researcher who got lazy and plucked some restaurant recommendations from AI…which wound up hallucinating a fake eatery that’s now listed among the real ones. Ironically, the abundance of AI-generated content — which promises to make life “easier” — actually makes it much harder for a traveler to be confident in the information that they are relying on.
How do you know whether information is AI-generated? You don’t. Each of us must become a more savvy and skeptical consumer of information to figure out which sources are reliable and trustworthy…and which ones aren’t. When in doubt, double-check by confirming important details with a primary source (such as verifying opening times on a museum or restaurant’s own website, or even with a phone call).
Ultimately, AI is a bullet train zipping down the tracks. We travelers have a choice: Let it whoosh right past…stand in its way and get squashed on its windshield…or hop on board and figure out how to use it — and how not to use it. Don’t just surrender your entire trip to AI; use it to smartly supplement your efforts, with low-stakes tasks. For decisions that could make or break your trip, rely on a trustworthy source…like a good old-fashioned guidebook.
We’d like to hear from you! As a member of our merry band of travelers, please weigh in on this article by using the comments below. Meanwhile, many of these topics will also be covered on Rick Steves’ Europe’s various social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok — and we hope you’ll join the conversation there as well.