Should You Use AI to Plan Your Travels?

Ever wondered how artificial intelligence could transform your travel plans. We'll explore how AI tools like ChatGPT, Poe, Claude, and Google Gemini can simplify the often overwhelming task of trip planning. I’ll also stress the importance of verifying AI-generated information through personal anecdotes to ensure your plans are both practical and current. This episode is packed with tips and insights on leveraging technology while keeping your travel adventures safe and enjoyable.

Inspired to start your own podcast? Tune in to hear how Stephanie Gass's programs, including her invaluable free five-day Profitable Podcast Bootcamp, helped me launch a successful podcast. Stephanie's expertise covers everything from growing an audience to monetizing your show and simplifying sales. With the added allure of live sessions, door prizes, and scholarship opportunities, this bootcamp is a treasure trove for any aspiring podcaster. Sign up at https://stefaniegass.com/bootcamp
https://solotraveladventures--stefaniegass.thrivecart.com/podcasttoprofitmastermind/645bad576d0ba/

Facebook community: Solo Travel for Women Over 50

Send me a message or share your solo travel story with me.
https://www.speakpipe.com/SoloTravelAdventures

Leave a review:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/solo-travel-adventures-safe-travel-for-women-preparing-for-a-trip-overcoming-fear-travel-tips/id1650161410

Chapters

• 0:00 AI for Travel Planning and Exploration
• 12:51 Profitable Podcast Bootcamp

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello sister travelers. Well, should you use AI to plan your next trip and how do you feel about AI? Let's talk about this scary topic in today's episode. Welcome to Solo Travel Adventures for women 50 and older. I'm Cheryl S, your host, solo travel advocate, freedom traveler and coach. This is your Passport to Adventure.

Speaker 1: 0:31

I have a confession to make I'm a Gen Xer, as I believe many of you that listen are, or part of the baby boomer as well. This AI stuff is kind of scares me, I'll be honest, and I have been resisting for a few years at least two years becoming aware of how it could benefit just people, whether it's for doing research or planning travel, which is what we're going to talk about today. I have always been concerned about you know really what? How helpful can it be? And I think I'm I've converted just a bit, but I'm not completely reliant on AI. I like to look at it as a tool, and you will still need to do your own research. Reason being so my son, who's very smart. He's very into technology and computers, science, math, all that stuff, and he's he's developed his own app, so he knows about technology, and when I had asked him several months ago actually about AI. He did mention that it is getting better. Of course, I will preface this, this little statement, in that he said a lot of the prompts. Okay, right now they're hiring a lot of people to, you know, create prompts for AI or to create answers, and they have that data in there. Yes, it's pulling from the web and everything like that, but a lot of times it may be pulling outdated information, and so that's why I'm saying you can use it and it is beneficial, but make sure you're following up to make sure it's correct that it's up to date. Particularly if you're looking at travel ideas for maybe places to stay, places to go, sometimes you might have a restaurant recommendation but maybe that restaurant has since folded right. But there are ways we can use AI to plan our travel now.

Speaker 1: 2:54

So how do we use AI to plan our travel? Well, there are many AI apps out there. The most popular one, the most used one apps out there, the most popular one, the most used one it might have even been the first one out there was ChatGPT, and that's still kind of the go-to, but I'll list a couple others. Another one that's very much like ChatGPT it is called Poe P-O-E like Edgar Allan Poe. It's called Poe, p-o-e, like Edgar Allan Poe. There's Claude, which they say has a little more of a human response. There's Google Gemini, there's Zapper Central, zapper Chatbots, I should say Jasper, which is mainly used for marketing campaigns, and I'm sure there are a slew more.

Speaker 1: 3:44

So how do you use it to help plan your travel? I think it's a great tool for one major, major thing A lot of times when we go to plan a trip, we get this overwhelm because there is so much out there. There's so much that you could be perusing on the internet to get down these rabbit holes of researching and looking at places and then you're not sure where you really want to end up going. So it can kind of narrow that and kind of prevent this overwhelm that might be occurring.

Speaker 1: 4:21

If you're trying to plan your own trip, now, if you're using a travel advisor, most likely they're probably using AI to help their narrow their search down as well. So just know that it's it's a good tool for that. Now, if you're planning to use AI to help plan a trip, how do you use it? Well, you open one of those apps and you ask a question and you want to provide what we call prompts, the right prompts or the right questions. So you want to be very specific on destination, budget, dates and any kind of special interest you might have. For example, maybe you want your trip to be a little more on the cultural side, or maybe you're an adventure person and you want some adventure while you're at you know taking this trip, or you prefer a relaxing, relaxing vacation, and so you want to make sure you put those things in.

Speaker 1: 5:23

You might even include dates or time of year that you want to travel, because it will also help give ideas for activities to do, maybe based on the time of year. It could possibly pull festivals that it might be going on during a specific month that you have requested, and then once it spits out you know a nice long answer different, multiple bullet points. Typically, if you're finding that is not giving you what you want or it's too vague, you want to refine your prompts or redefine that question Again, getting a little more specific, maybe on your request or your question. Now, once you receive these ideas or an itinerary, say you go in and you want to create an itinerary for your trip, and it can do that. Once you have that, do more research. So I'm going to give you an example of why I'm really pressing to do more research. So I, for an example, I put into chat GPT, I asked it to create a day, a travel day, in Lisbon, portugal, portugal, right, and it spit out some great ideas. But as I was looking at it, it was chock full of stuff and there's just no way, no way I'll ever get to all the things they recommended, all the the sites.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Now, of course it is recommendations, but I've also seen where AI has. One example I saw was it planned a road trip through parts of California to see some of the national parks. And if you're not from the US, california is huge, it's one of the biggest states and so drive time from you know one national park to another and so on up the you know, from like south to north, would take a long time. But this AI kind of plan was giving you like three days to do these parks. And I'm going. That's not possible, possible. So when you actually look at the drive time allowing for you know, having to sleep, having to eat, having to stop and go to the bathroom and then making sure you have enough time at that destination, right, we're not just going to drive by right. So it's not always accurate in that way or it just tries to, seems like it tries to cram in a lot, and so just keep that in mind, know how you travel. So I like to, I don't like to cram things in, I like to have downtime in my days. So, even though it made some great recommendations for Lisbon. I probably I'll probably only get to a third of those if I decide to do them right, and I like to also let, as I'm there, see what entices me and kind of go with the flow, but you know, to have an idea or two of something to get to in Lisbon.

Speaker 1: 8:38

Yes, jatgpt provided that great itinerary for me, and so it has its pros and cons, and so, just being aware of that, certainly it can be a tool to use Now. So here's a recommendation. You want to try it out? You're not sure You're like me, you're a Gen Xer and we're just like, oh, ai, you know I don't still not like 100% sold on it, to be honest, but again, a tool. We always want to have some tools at our disposal to maybe help us. I just like, as I mentioned before, it kind of squelches the overwhelm of planning or researching a specific place to see what to do there, right. So it's a nice way to kind of narrow it down and maybe even take some suggestions from it.

Speaker 1: 9:32

So my recommendation on if you want to try it out and without having to spend a whole lot of money and like flying over the pond or whatever, and since you probably know your hometown the best or at least maybe you do, maybe you don't or pick a place that you know like the back of your hand right and type into to your AI bot and ask it to plan maybe a day, two days, you know, in that specific town or city. Like for me, I would try out either Dallas or Pittsburgh and kind of see what it shoots out. And if I do Dallas and I want to try it out, which I'm recommending, maybe you try it out. You know, get something, get an itinerary planned by AI and test it out, see if you like it. But look up the places they might mention, make sure you know there's still an operation, see how far distance it is, travel time between places and see what you think. I think that's going to be your best initial option, especially if you're hesitant about using it for your travels. Now there's wonderful things that AI can do, and I've heard just recently how helpful it has been for teachers lately in helping them create maybe writing prompts for their writing class or creating a quiz. So the teacher would put in maybe the answers or the question and whatever, and that would create a multiple choice quiz for their students. So it does have its benefits. It's definitely takes a little bit of off off off of our brain, our thinking, but I also like off of our brain, our thinking, but I also like that we can think for ourselves and that we allow the space for spontaneity, some space for unexpected things in your travels. So if everything is completely planned and you are following your AI plan to a T, just know it's going to be great, but you may miss out on sort of that cultural connection and maybe miss out on meeting people because you're so hung up on following this plan. And so I plan.

Speaker 1: 12:06

I did the Lisbon one. I've looked at it and you know two out of the 10 things the chat GPT offered me was a few good suggestions. There's probably two or three on there that I will definitely check out when I'm in Lisbon. So what are your thoughts? Do you trust AI? Are you using it currently for any of your travel itineraries? Do you shy away from it like I did until recently?

Speaker 1: 12:39

However, you decide to use AI or not, just know that it is a tool to be used, and obviously Just know that it is a tool to be used and obviously follow up with that research sisters and get out there and have those adventures. Have you ever thought about starting your own podcast? As I've talked about before, I used Stephanie Gass and her programs to get my podcast up and running and successful and I have her to thank, and so I would like you to experience that. If you have ever thought of having your own podcast this week, it's not too late to join. It already started, but you can still get in on her free five-day bootcamp and check it out.

Speaker 2: 13:21

What's up, new friend, I'm Steph Gass. I know you just heard a little bit about me, but I wanted to personally come on and invite you to the Profitable Podcast Bootcamp. This is a five-day challenge, so to speak, for those of you who are interested in podcasting or who already have a podcast and you wanna know how a podcast works to grow an audience or make money online. I promise you it's so worth your time, and this one-hour-per-day live challenge is gonna give you everything you need to know about why podcasting works, how to make money from a podcast, how to make sales really easy, and so much more. We're giving away swag, door prizes. We even have scholarships to my courses and programs valued at over $10,000.

Speaker 2: 14:08

So we just wanted to come on and invite you to be part of this challenge. Head right now over to stephaniegasscom slash bootcamp that's stephaniegasscom slash bootcamp and get registered right away. You'll get entered to win free swag. And the best part of all is you're going to learn how podcasting can potentially be a way for you to truly grow, make an impact and income in an online business and allow you to have that freedom and that fruit of not feeling like you are tied to social media 24 seven, or having to do a hundred different things to figure out a way to be successful for the kingdom of God. This is going to lay all of those pieces out for you, in alignment with your faith. Again, stephaniegasscom slash bootcamp.