Imagine AI as a Travel Agent
I can easily come up with ideas of how AI can help me arrange trips. It would be so easy for AI to pull an itinerary according to how many days I will be away and where I plan to visit. This itinerary can be highly customized. I can tell AI I love nature, I would love to go for more hiking and just be in the mountains, or I can tell AI I want to take a walk in the city, knowing every piece of history. AI will always handle my requests nicely and fast. Also, it would save me a lot of time going through all sorts of websites, travel blogs, and brochures looking for things to do. It also makes time arrangements more easily. AI itineraries can come with timetables. They can fetch opening times and provide every information you need without the effort of making several calls or sending messages. This greatly lowers the risk of you taking a 5-hour flight and a 2-hour bus to see a famous painting in an art museum, only to find out Tuesday is closing day. AI may even be able to make reservations for you. Google can make calls checking table availabilities for me now. I’m sure there lies more potential.
There are certainly some concerns. How should data be collected? Many touring companies do have their websites, as well as official travel websites for certain cities. But they are often not up-to-date, you still need to take one more step, calling them to find out everything. This will lead to inaccuracy in trip planning. Other companies or activities don’t have websites. They may be local charms famous by word-of-mouth, or they may be small diners that only open when the owner is in a good mood. These kinds of information needs to be collected by humans in order for AI to learn.
The other idea is that the result of AItrip planning can be easily manipulated, depending on what kind of data they are being fed. If you put a lot of good comments for an awful restaurant, AI can be tricked that this is a good one, and will continuously recommend it to people. Also when attractions can’t propagandize through media or press, they will make efforts to let AI recommend them more frequently. Though it’s a reasonable commercial behavior, it still restricts the hidden gems being found by more people and totally goes against the idea of “plan your unique trip and see the undiscovered beauty”.
Having AI planning trips for us seems like a promising idea, but we should definitely strike some balance in between. Hopefully, some companies are working on this idea already and I can be hands-free in the near future when it comes to trip planning.
