The juxtaposition between what perhaps the best single use case I have seen for AI and how bad of an ad for it is killing me. I love it.

"I told my bumbling assistant to plan a trip for me and he got nothing right but I enjoyed it because the chaos introduced a certain spontaneity and whimsy missing from my life"

I found that Deep Research mode in Gemini was able to give me a well planned 4 day trip to a major city.

I told it my preferences and of the group members, where we arrived and departed, at what times. I gave it my itinerary and then asked it to plan two new itineraries and also suggest a location to book a hotel that was convenient for the early flight on the last day.

I went away for 20 mins and gave me a 20 page document with a good summary and decent options. I did choose some of the activities it suggested.

I did this 10 months ago. It’s probably better now.

But Gemini has access to google maps, so it can estimate travel times, and know which lunch places are near which sites and which hotels have good reviews. So if you want AI to work for travel panning you need to ground it in good data.

To counter, we did the same with a trip to Copenhagen for 7 days and it got most paths correct. Train routes, places to visit with kids, restaurants, reservations, weather, most of it was great. There were a couple mistakes of course here and there, thankfully we did our due diligence, but by and large, we plan to do this for future trips.

That was funny, thank you.

I am now reminded of a short trip with less tech savy folks, where I also on the trip noticed that the plan was a bit .. not working. And the person organizing it complaining to the bus driver, why they were not going what the internet told him, they were going. The internet being ChatGPT.

Its not pre-internet travel, rather backpacking. I do it to this very day, by far the best and most rewarding way to travel, the further and more exotic the better.

It has a downside - I'll never do these pre-arranged trips where one is in complete luxury bubble, interactions with locals are the best part of experiences. What a waste of potential.

And yes its mostly compatible with kids, it depends more on specific location than mode of travel (ie avoiding malaria/dengue/etc. regions)

I've been planning vacations with ChatGPT's Deep Research since it became available. Absolutely brilliant!

From finding areas with favorite activities for each parents, teens and kids to discovering the do-not-miss attractions and scheduling our vacation between them - it is invaluable. I've seen places I never knew existed in countries I've never been to before and speaking languages I did not speak.

Very few mistakes and lots more flexibility and understanding than the travel agents I used before. I do write long prompts though with lots and lots of info about our family and what we like to do.

Not yet good at finding, filtering by our criteria, comparing and booking available accommodation yet, but it's getting there.

What was a “good model” and harness? I would expect decent results using say Codex with 5.5 xhigh to research and verify an itinerary. 5.5 Pro with search would also be promising.