In his latest column, Jonathan McCrea is striking a lighter tone and telling us how AI has become his ideal travel companion.
I’m heading away for a couple of weeks with the family. We’re going through the packing list now. Underwear, Calpol, flip flops, emergency sugar rations (for me, to be clear). The most important item apart from the tickets, the passports and the kids (‘Kevin!’) is my phone.
ChatGPT and Perplexity have become completely invaluable as travel planning partners, so for a lighter touch this week as the summer holidays properly kick in, I thought I’d share some of my top tips for using AI on the go.
The road less travelled
Perplexity does travel really, really well. It can manage a complicated itinerary in a way that would tax even the most experienced travel agents.
We went on holiday two years ago, when Perplexity was pretty new. I wanted to go somewhere I hadn’t visited before. I asked: “Suggest a new travel destination for me and my two children. We have 10 days, so would like to move around an area less well travelled. The destination needs to be within 4 hours flight time from Dublin. Ideal temperatures should be between 20-26 degrees. Please ensure that each destination on the trip is near water we can swim in, either coastal or by a lake. My kids get car sick, so make sure the road trip between each place is not more than 3 and half hours. Suggest things to do in the morning and evening, including restaurants. Avoid spicy food as my kids are frustratingly mundane in their tastes and I really can’t be bothered with arguing in restaurants any more.”
I remember giving a presentation to a room full of people in Dun Laoghaire last September where I showed the result of that same prompt. A wonderful trip to Montenegro and Albania that we actually, genuinely, followed to a tee.
On stage in Dun Laoghaire, I was introducing Perplexity and showing how it had laid out its response in a table with dates, locations, drive times between locations and activities. It had references to articles, travel reviews and even a photo of the incredible sunset boat trip you can take on Lake Skadar through a flotilla of lily pads. On the next slide, a matching photo from the trip, this time with us in it.
After the demo, a leader of a travel agent association took me aside for a word. She had a very concerned look on her face.
Granular advice
If you want really granular control of your next road trip, Routeperfect is incredible. It has taken in recommendations from hundreds of travel operators and created a platform that allows you to tweak your experience in countless ways. You can get it to suggest a route, edit it, request a more cultural slant or a more foodie vibe and it will change all of your recommendations accordingly. It even pulls hotel rates and availability from booking.com so that you can book straight from the platform.
A friend is travelling to Sri Lanka next week. I suggested she ask ChatGPT for packing advice and to add travel dates. It considered the forecast, recommended footwear for specific locations, noted that suncream is often counterfeit and expensive to buy there, and proceeded with a comprehensive list assuming standard bag allowances and a wash rotation of four days. It recommended taking more socks than usual if my friend was planning on sink washing because the humidity means that simply drying clothes on the back of the chair is difficult. The answer was so comprehensive and thoughtful it was borderline irritating. Bloody know-it-all.
My cousin sent me a snap from her visit to Tokyo. If you’ve ever been, you’ll know that English is not spoken widely at all, and the cultural divide between Ireland and Japan is immense. Just because you’ve seen a few Studio Ghibli movies and know the difference between sashimi and maki doesn’t mean that you won’t struggle to communicate the most basic of concepts in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Not a problem today, of course, where any number of AI apps will translate voice perfectly and instantly into any number of languages.
Using ChatGPT Advanced voice mode, you can simply hold your phone up and have a fluid conversation with a complete stranger in their native language. Which is handy if you’re on the shift, like – which,I should very quickly point out, my cousin is very much not.
Apple and Android have built-in live translation features too, if you have a newer model.
‘The best part of any holiday, of course, is when I actually get to put the phone away’
Budgeting is tricky and while platforms such as Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT can give you a good idea, the results aren’t always perfect, but you will definitely get a good ballpark with a prompt like: “Create a detailed budget for the following California coastal road trip using only price data from the past 48 months: for every pre-trip purchase and daily expense list date/stage, category, description in Euros at the current exchange rate in a spreadsheet-style table, citing sources and questioning any bargains that look suspect. Finish with daily subtotals, a grand total, and a short note on volatile costs plus smart savings.”
The best part of any holiday, of course, is when I actually get to put the phone away and look out the window, try some new food or strike up a conversation with a local. Call me old-fashioned, but until ChatGPT can hand me a beer in the pool while I read my book, humans still have a lot to offer the holiday experience.
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