As a travel writer and accredited travel journalist, it concerns me just how much people are relying on AI to create their dream trips and travel itineraries. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love using AI to help me research and brainstorm ideas, and I treat it like my intern. But I always check everything it gives me, since it often gets things wrong.
Ten years ago, if you’d have told me I could have AI plan my vacation, I’d have laughed and thought you were writing the plot of a futuristic movie. Now, however, it’s a reality. But is it all it’s cracked up to be, or are you setting yourself up for some holiday disasters?
Well, I do love putting these things to the test, so I asked ChatGPT to help me plan a long weekend in three European capital cities. The three I chose are ones I have extensive knowledge of, so would hopefully be able to spot any glaring errors quickly. The results were downright scary.
The Results of Letting AI Plan My Vacation
The three cities I chose for this experiment were Paris, London, and Berlin, as I know them well and visit often. The results? Well, suffice it to say, I won’t be leaving any of my vacations in the hands of AI. Below are the horrible highlights of how much ChatGPT got wrong.
- All three travel itineraries had a minimum of three big errors
- All three travel itineraries had at least one recommendation for a restaurant that was permanently closed
- All three travel itineraries recommended visiting museums outside of closing hours
- Two of the three travel itineraries made no logistical sense and had me chasing my tail from one end of the city to the other
5 AI Travel Planning Mistakes
I could wax lyrical all day about the mistakes made across all three itineraries, but rather than get on my soapbox, here are the biggest mistakes that hopefully will help you if you decide to use AI to plan your vacation.
Attractions and Places that Don’t Exist
Suggesting fictional places was probably my biggest concern. Now, this might have been because I was very specific about what I asked it to include in my travel itinerary. For example, for the Paris itinerary, I told it I loved books and reading and would like to explore some English-language bookshops. Harmless enough on its own.
However, when combined with my request to go to some beautiful Parisian-style cafes that were Instagram-worthy, it came up with a floral cafe/bookshop, which it had found on a Facebook page that was completely AI-generated and didn’t exist.
In London, I asked it to take me on a tour of some famous London streets, and I happened to mention I love musicals, so I would like to take in a show on the West End. As part of the itinerary, it suggested I visit Cherry Tree Lane from the musical Mary Poppins. Of course, Cherry Tree Lane doesn’t exist and was a figment of P.L. Travers’ imagination.
Restaurants and Hotels That Have Closed Their Doors
In London, after telling it I wanted to go to a restaurant that was buzzing in the 1920s and 30s, it told me to go to Café de Paris, on Coventry Street near Picadilly, which shut in 2020, and is now a nightclub called Lío London
For the Paris itinerary, I’d mentioned I wanted to eat at a restaurant with a view of the city skyline, and it suggested Ciel de Paris up the Montparnasse Tower, which has now closed.
It was the same in Berlin. It sent me Brasserie Gendarmenmarkt, which closed this summer. Plus, a trip to the Pergamon Museum, which shut its doors in 2023 and isn’t expected to reopen until 2037 at the earliest.
Recommending the Wrong Visiting Times
And it kept getting better. For my Paris itinerary, it had me visiting the Palace of Versailles on the last day of my trip, a Monday. The Palace is closed on Mondays. I know this from personal experience, making my own mistake by not checking and assuming it would be open every day.
On the flip side, it said Notre Dame was closed after the 2019 fire. Of course, it’s now reopened, so that was a load of rubbish too.
At least I wasn’t there on a Tuesday when the Louvre is usually closed.
Lack of Any Logistical Planning
What was really alarming was its complete lack of map planning. Paris is laid out in a snail, and the arrondissements work their way outwards. It is completely illogical to spend 1 hour at Pere Lachaise Cemetery (you need at least 3) and then be back in the center for a tour of the Catacombs 30 minutes later.
And don’t get me started on London. Chelsea is nowhere near the Tower of London, and you can’t get from one to the other in 15 minutes; it simply doesn’t work.
Oh, and it also had me staying in three different hotels in Berlin for a four-day weekend getaway. I mean, really?
Being Biased Towards Adverts
Part of the issue is the bias towards ads, because the keywords used in ad campaigns by more aggressive advertisers are exactly the same as those the AI platforms are trained on. This gives an unfair advantage to those advertisers and completely skews the results in favor of who knows how to get the most clicks, hardly an unbiased opinion.
The issue is that you’re often not getting the best recommendations for your trip. The hotel suggestions I got were way more expensive than the ones I researched myself. This could have serious budget implications if you aren’t aware of what’s out there.
Found this useful? Get more like it in your inbox as a Lifestyle Library Insider.
The Problem With AI Travel Agents
Who has time to spend hours trawling through websites and magazines to find the best places to visit on your vacation? I get it, the idea of speeding up this process is extremely appealing to our time-poor society.
We’re all jumping on the AI travel agent bandwagon. A survey conducted by Matador Network of 1200 people found that 64% have or plan to use AI to plan their travel. That’s huge. So what’s the problem if so many of us are doing it?
It comes down to how they actually work. These programs aren’t like a digital encyclopedia storing facts. They’re more like expert guessers, trained to predict what word should come next in a sentence.
When you type a question, the system scans for patterns it’s seen before and starts building an answer word by word. It doesn’t stop to check if that answer is true, only whether it sounds right. That’s where the trouble starts.
AI doesn’t know the difference between fact and fiction. It just wants to give you something that reads smoothly, even if the content itself is completely off base. This is what researchers call an “AI hallucination.” When the system doesn’t have enough information to give a correct response, it doesn’t admit it. It simply keeps writing, filling the gaps with confident nonsense that feels believable.
Travel planning highlights this weakness perfectly. When you ask an AI to map out a weekend in Paris or a wine-tasting tour through Tuscany, it might invent details that look legitimate at first glance but fall apart in real life. People have caught ChatGPT doing this with fake book titles and imaginary authors, creating sources that seem authentic because they follow the right format. The same thing happens with travel advice.
There are a few key reasons for these errors.
Outdated information
AI models don’t pull data from the live internet. They work from a stored snapshot, which means they don’t know if a café shut down last month or if a museum updated its opening hours for winter. So even the best itinerary might send you to a restaurant that hasn’t existed for years.
Uneven or biased data
The quality of an answer depends on what the AI was trained on. For major cities, there’s plenty of online information. But for smaller towns or rural spots, the data might be thin or overly promotional. That’s why some itineraries look like advertisements for certain hotels or chain restaurants instead of genuine recommendations.
No sense of the real world
This might be the biggest flaw of all. The AI doesn’t actually understand space or distance. To the system, “a ten-minute walk” and “a three-hour train ride” are just words. It doesn’t comprehend that you can’t visit two places on opposite sides of town within the same hour. That’s why so many of its travel plans are physically impossible to follow.
There is no easy fix, as these mistakes are baked into the technology’s design. When you ask an AI to plan your trip, you’re asking a language tool to navigate the real world, and that’s where everything starts to fall apart.
Disclaimer: This article is for general information only and is not professional advice. It may contain affiliate links. Please see our full Editorial Policy for details.
Become a Lifestyle Library Insider
Health tips, money know-how, travel deals and garden ideas for life after 50, straight to your inbox.
Kylie Lang is a nationally syndicated travel journalist with bylines on the Associated Press Wire & more, a lifestyle writer, and the founder and editor of Your Lifestyle Library (yourlifestylelibrary.com). She holds a BA (Honours) in History from the University of Kent and is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers.