As the world’s largest travel guidance platform, TripAdvisor has been revolutionizing how we research, plan, and book our travels since 2000. With over one billion user-generated reviews, it’s the go-to platform for travel enthusiasts looking to explore the world.
So, it only makes sense that they’d jump on the AI travel tool train to take the travel planning game to a new level. The platform’s new OpenAI-powered tool, currently in beta for US users, compiles the site’s reviews (and data from its other brands, including Viator and TheFork) to curate day-by-day itineraries based on user preferences.
Whether you’re planning a romantic anniversary trip for two or a bachelor party for ten, you can input your travel destination, dates, and interests to receive a custom itinerary, complete with restaurant and activity suggestions.
At first glance, this seems like a massive leap forward for personalized travel planning, and we’d be remiss to say it’s not. But in an industry where AI seems to be all the rage, does it live up to the hype, and how does it compare to other AI travel tools already on the market?
Here’s what to know.
The Features & Functionality of TripAdvisor’s AI-Powered Travel Assistant
Source: TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor’s AI tool helps you create a custom day-by-day itinerary backed by traveler reviews. The best part? It only requires you to answer four simple questions to get a personalized plan that suits your travel preferences.
Here’s how it works:
- To start, simply enter your destination.
- Then, you’ll be prompted to select your travel dates (or the number of days you plan to travel if you haven’t decided yet).
- Then, the tool will ask you to select one of four options to indicate who you’ll travel with. Choices include solo, couple, friends, or family. If you select family, the tool asks if you’re traveling with kids, so it can search for and suggest family-friendly spots and activities.
- Finally, you’ll be prompted to check boxes related to your interests, ranging from museums and hidden gems to delicious food (although you can input your interests, too). This question allows TripAdvisor to know precisely what you’re interested in to customize the itinerary to those interests.
The AI assistant takes over from there, analyzing your inputs against traveler data to suggest activities, museums, and restaurants that suit your preferences best. It’ll look something like this:
Source: TripAdvisor
What’s more, the AI TripAdvisor tool ensures that all the suggestions have been tried and tested by fellow travelers (something most other AI travel tools don’t currently offer), giving you the confidence to explore new places.
Unleashing the Power of Generative AI
So, how does OpenAI factor into the mix?
Unlike other tools that source information from various online sources, TripAdvisor is essentially using OpenAI’s generative AI power to analyze its own massive data set, including over a billion reviews, and create recommendations that are tailored to each traveler’s specific needs and preferences.
The generated text described within the itinerary is also (very noticeably) written by AI. In a press release, Tripadvisor’s President and CEO, Matt Goldberg, said of this feature, “By harnessing the power of generative AI, we can begin to fully unlock the potential of our platform’s unparalleled review and traveler intent data, allowing us to offer truly unique travel guidance to our members.
This innovative approach to AI integration ensures TripAdvisor’s AI tool can read between the lines of millions of reviews and glean insights into what travelers are really looking for in a destination.
How TripAdvisor’s New AI Tool Simplifies Travel Planning
As any travel enthusiast can attest, researching and planning a trip (at least a thoughtful, well-planned one) is often stressful and time-consuming.
With endless destinations, accommodations, activities, and dining options, it’s not uncommon to feel lost in a sea of information and reviews. We have Google, sure, but TripAdvisor’s new OpenAI-powered tool simplifies the entire process by offering the following benefits.
Avoid Sifting Through Reviews
Namely, one of the most significant benefits of TripAdvisor’s AI tool is its ability to eliminate the need for users to sift through countless reviews and recommendations themselves. With the tool’s proprietary machine-learning algorithms, travelers can spend less time researching and more time enjoying their trip.
Get Top-Rated Suggestions
Moreover, the AI tool can suggest top-rated experiences that cater to travelers’ specific interests and preferences. While it doesn’t currently ask for your budget (which would be a helpful feature in future iterations), it does provide opening hours and pricing for the activities it suggests (alongside TripAdvisor experiences that you can book straight within the app for added ease).
Get Date-Specific Recommendations
Ultimately, though, it’s the tool’s versatility and precision that makes it a standout in the world of AI travel tools. It can identify popular activities and attractions that are open during specific travel dates, making it easier for users to create itineraries based on the weather or time of year they’ll be traveling.
Fun to Use
The tool, at least in its beta phase, feels almost like a fun BuzzFeed quiz. You answer a few questions, and it tells you what your dream vacation is. You might still have to (okay, you’ll most likely have to) review the suggested itinerary. Still, you at least have a well-planned basic itinerary to work from based on your interests, making the tool great at minimizing the initial stress of trip planning.
In this sense, perhaps, it’s more like a Canva template than a BuzzFeed quiz. For both Canva templates and TripAdvisor’s AI itineraries, you may have to make a few tweaks here and there to get it to where you need it to be, but most of the upfront work has been done for you.
How TripAdvisor’s AI Trip Planning Tool Stacks Up
If you’ve been keeping tabs on AI travel tools, you likely know that other platforms, like Trip.com, Matador Network, and more, all launched AI-powered travel assistants earlier in the year. TripAdvisor’s tool is slightly different because it’s much more than a chatbot.
Trip.com’s TripGen and Matador Network’s GuideGeek are both chatbot-based AI assistants that allow you to enter questions such as “Where should I go with my boyfriend in November for his birthday?” or “What’s something I can’t miss in Naples?” They use AI to scour the internet and spit out answers.
While that’s similar to the way TripAdvisor’s tool works, it doesn’t appear that the competing tools are sourcing their information based on traveler reviews like TripAdvisor, which is where the real power and authority lies in this tool
TripAdvisor’s tool is also incredibly user-friendly, and you don’t have to be tech-savvy to make it work for you. The AI assistant is built to understand natural language, so you can use conversational phrases to specify your preferences where allowed.
While novel and helpful, it is worth noting that, like nearly every other AI tool on the market, TripAdvisor’s AI tool comes with typical AI issues. The recommendations aren’t always spot on, and the text generated about each attraction is very clearly AI, meaning that you might not be getting the most accurate, up-to-date description of each spot.
As with most AI tools, it’s best to use this one as a starting base while being aware that you should double-check opening hours, pricing, and other details for accuracy before visiting any place suggested.
Is This the Future of Travel Planning?
TripAdvisor’s new AI tool has the potential to revolutionize the travel industry by providing personalized recommendations and improved search results. Its ability to analyze vast amounts of data can enhance the overall travel experience for users by reducing travel planning time and offering traveler-backed customized recommendations.
This is on par with how other businesses in the travel industry (and beyond) are utilizing current AI technology. While it doesn’t offer anything humans can’t do themselves, it does help them drastically reduce the time in which they do things like create travel itineraries or compile research on destinations and attractions.
Will this and other similar AI tools replace travel agents, travel writers, or expert guides anytime soon? It’s unlikely. However, tools like this make their life and jobs much easier and more efficient.
