Since the release of ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence, generally known as “AI,” has grown dramatically in the scope of its use, the benefits it provides, and our increasing dependence on it. Caveat: it has also dramatically increased the risks and concerns associated with using AI. That caveat will appear in most of our writings about AI. We intend it to serve as a caution to practice safe cyber-whatever; we do not want to dissuade you from using it. We like AI and continue to increase our use of it almost daily.
We have used forms of AI in travel planning for many years. Examples include going online to order airline tickets, looking for an appropriate hotel and making hotel reservations, looking for and making restaurant reservations, and looking in Google for things to see and do in various cities. That was yesterday. Today, thanks to ChatGPT, we have more sophisticated capabilities. When it comes to travel planning now, our go-to favorite comes from Microsoft and takes the form of its “CoPilot” App.
While far from perfect, we think that CoPilot offers the best AI virtual assistant currently available in general and particularly when it comes to travel. We use it and do not hesitate to recommend it. (Note: We do not provide it with confidential information and discourage you from doing so as well). CoPilot comes in a variety of forms and locations, all using the name “CoPilot.” That creates the impression of a single program or chatbot. That impression misleads. CoPilot consists of several variations on a theme that do not operate identically and can give different results. Be careful which CoPilot you ask….
We do not have the space in this article to go into how CoPilot operates, but we wrote an article on that topic for Experience Magazine and refer you to it for more information on that subject. Regarding vacation planning, you can interact with the primary CoPilot iteration that you access through the App or your browser, or you can use the Vacation Planner iteration that you can find online. We ran some comparisons and made these discoveries:
We concluded that we prefer using Vacation Planner for travel planning, but we will run some inquiries through both to ensure that we don't miss anything worth seeing.
You have lots of opportunities to use AI at lesser levels in your vacation planning, and you have likely done so for many years. You can still use the online ticket sites, the fare consolidators, the online hotel sites, the hotel consolidators, and a variety of other sites to make your plans. You may need to continue to use some of them since CoPilot will give you flight information, hotel information, and information about sights to see; it will NOT conduct or coordinate any related financial transaction (purchasing tickets, making a hotel reservation, etc.).
While the information about flights and hotels has proven useful, Copilot’s superpowers are the identification of sites to see and building travel itineraries, which you can make as simple as what cities on what days or as detailed as a daily schedule for each day of your trip.
To show you CoPilot’s power, one of the authors, Jeff, and his wife have spent about a month traveling outside the country for the last 10 years (Covid excluded). This year, they have enlisted CoPilot to do their vacation planning for them. They decided to go to Morocco and stop in Portugal on the way back for some excellent Port and a few leather jackets. Originally, they planned to go only to Marrakech and Casablanca. CoPilot recommended that they also go to Fes and produce a list of things to see that convinced them to do exactly that. CoPilot generated an itinerary for them to spend time in each of those three Moroccan cities and in Lisbon. They did not want a daily schedule, but CoPilot produced recommendations for sights to see in each city and restaurants to try to sample different types of local cuisine. CoPilot also produced a list of hotels in each city meeting Jeff's specifications (location, accessibility, and amenities). FYI, CoPilot helped in creating that list by advising which locations would best serve the planned visit.
CoPilot provided detailed lists of the most significant sights to see and when to see them, including guidelines how long a visit will take. Jeff does not want to have a detailed daily itinerary, but he asked for that to see what CoPilot would do. Its first attempt looked daunting for a couple in their mid to late 70’s. It would have worked fine for them 30 years ago. It looked much better after he tuned it up by slowing CoPilot’s roll. Yes, CoPilot has the flexibility and the ability to quickly and easily make adjustments per your requests. At his request, CoPilot also made recommendations as to goods to purchase in each location and the stores to seek out for those goods. The store selection may prove its weakest link as it did not always provide specifics and sometimes only very general information. Most notably, the last time he visited Lisbon, Jeff had some leather jackets tailor-made to his measurements in a short period. He asked CoPilot for a good place to go for a similar service but did not get a clear and definitive response.
The next steps will involve making reservations at the hotels CoPilot suggested in each city. Likely, he will go through one of the consolidators we have regularly used for hotels. We have, over the years, used several such consolidators, but most often go through Expedia, Orbitz, or Hotels.com.
The final piece will involve airline reservations and either airline or train reservations between the cities in Morocco. He probably will choose ground transportation within Morocco as it provides the opportunity to see more of the countryside; and avoids the hassle of the airport. CoPilot can also get the train schedules and fares.
As Jeff has not yet been to Morocco, he cannot compare CoPilot’s recommendations to his own experiences. Maybe that will be an article for the fall, after he returns. He can make that comparison with Lisbon, however, and, except for the tailor disappointment, it seems to have done well there. As a further test, we ran trips to cities we know well through CoPilot. Those cities included London, New York, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans. While we found that we knew about places we liked that CoPilot did not include, generally, we liked what it recommended very much and would have found the trips it planned enjoyable. On the flip side, while we liked places CoPilot did not mention, it included places we did not know and will include in our next visits to those venues.
When you use CoPilot or any ChatGPT-driven assistant, the more detail you provide, the closer you will get to what you want in return. To give you an example, this is the first request made for an itinerary:
“Prepare an itinerary for a 21-day trip to Morocco and Portugal including only the cities of Marrakech, Casablanca, Fes, and Lisbon. Include recommendations for sightseeing with details as to accessibility, cost, and hours for each city. Include recommendations for hotels in each city that have private bathrooms, air conditioning, available restaurants, wheelchair accessibility, elevators, and are the equivalent of not less than three and preferably four-star hotels. Include recommendations for restaurants in each city featuring the local cuisine with excellent reputations for quality and located near the hotels you recommend. Include recommendations for what to buy in each city and where to buy it. Specifically include recommendations for places to buy leather jackets in Lisbon and places that will tailor-make men's leather jackets in three days.”
CoPilot’s Vacation Planner provided the following response:
Each site identified, the restaurants, the hotel and some of the stores came with hyperlinks to their websites and/or websites of tour providers that covered that sight for convenience in following up with them for additional information, reservations, etc.
Additional questions produced more information. For example, we asked CoPilot for more things to see in each city. That generated several more places to see. Other questions asked about hours of operation, admission fees, and more details about what made it special. While we do not have the space to go through the entire process in this article, this is an example of the response we got to an inquiry about an additional site it recommended:
“The Saadian Tombs in Marrakech are open to visitors every day from 9 am to 5 pm. You can purchase tickets at the entrance for a nominal fee. It’s a beautiful site with some of the most exquisite examples of Islamic architecture, and I highly recommend including it in your itinerary”.
You can find many Apps to help you with your travels. We have tried a significant number without exhausting the supply. Some offer more than others, some have proven helpful, and some are worthless. We think CoPilot has made a level for itself and set the bar fairly high. It has done everything we asked it to do by way of planning and done most of it very well. It took almost no time to do its work. In less than a half hour of questioning and responses, CoPilot provided at least as much information as one would expect to accumulate in several hours of work based on our experience. We have made CoPilot’s Vacation Planner our new go to travel planner, a virtual travel agent, so to speak (for those of you old enough to remember the days of travel agents). We encourage you to try CoPilot when you plan your next trip. Remember, you have nothing to lose but the frustration of trying to do it all yourself, even with the help of Google and a handful or two of Apps.
