Using AI to plan travel

Welcome to Travel Buddy

In episode 21 of the Travel Buddy podcast, Nowell Outlaw explores how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing travel planning. He delves into the practical use of AI tools like Claude to create efficient and detailed travel itineraries, even for destinations you're unfamiliar with. This episode is packed with insights that will enhance the way you explore new places, providing strategies and tips on making the most of AI in travel planning.

 

Key Highlights: 

• Discover how AI tools can quickly generate comprehensive travel itineraries, saving time and effort in planning. 
• Learn about the benefits and limitations of using AI for travel, such as lack of current event awareness.
• Explore how AI can offer cost-efficient travel options by comparing transportation and accommodation costs. 
• Understand the potential impact of AI on traditional travel roles, including travel agents, and how they might adapt.
• Gain insights into using AI for complex travel arrangements and personalized itineraries. 
  
  

Quotes:

• "AI tools can plot a course for you, including travel time and costs, making travel planning much easier." – Nowell Outlaw
• "Claude is fantastic for quickly finding answers that even lawyers agree with." – Nowell Outlaw

Transcript

Brandon Giella (00:01.273)

Hello, Noel. And welcome back to yet another episode of the travel buddy podcast. Today we are recording just after Thanksgiving. And so lots of travel a foot. You're planning a new trip, which I'm excited to hear more details about trust you had a great week. but today while you're planning this trip, you were talking about how AI is the best way, the next best way to plan an itinerary because you can ask it all sorts of questions and get,

 

a very detailed itinerary based on whatever you're looking for. And so I'm curious, how are you using AI to plan a trip?

 

Nowell Outlaw (00:38.801)

So it's interesting, right? You spend a lot of consumers, you spend a lot of time doing a lot of different searches, right, about places that they don't know anything about. And so our youngest son is gonna spend the spring semester in Berlin going to college. And, you know, my wife, of course, like, let's go see him, let's go do a trip. All of a sudden you're like, okay,

 

together a 10-day trip, let's say, or a week or whatever, you know, two weeks, where do we go? How do you get there? What's the easiest way, you know, we like flying direct. So, you one of my first questions was on flying, let's say, United, what are the direct destinations from Denver into Europe? Conveniently, United flies into London, Frankfurt, and Munich, right? So once you're in those places,

 

Now it becomes a question like, okay, if I'm spending, let's say if I'm flying to Munich and I want to know, well, where do you go? Right? And part of it is the analysis that AI can do that is hard for you is, you know, you want to go point A to point B. And I remember being in Peru and looking on a map and I was looking at this little map and I was like, and we were driving. This should take like three, four hours. And this guy's like, no, no, no, that'll take two days.

 

And you're like, what do you mean? And he's like, it's just switch, it doesn't show you on the map, but it's switch back, switch back, switch back, switch back, switch back. And you're like, my, and it did take two days, right? And yeah, and the interesting thing is that, you know, when you start looking at where should you go, you know, there's beautiful pictures, but it doesn't actually take into account, you know, if I want to start in Munich and then let's say only,

 

Brandon Giella (02:17.782)

no.

 

Nowell Outlaw (02:36.281)

the maximum time you want to spend on a train is four hours, right? So you can actually go to the AI tool and say, you know, I need a 10 day trip flying into Munich. I want to not be on a train every day. And the maximum time that I want to spend on a train is four hours, right? And it plots a course for you, right? And it's just interesting because you can then dive into and it prompts you for

 

Would you like more information on the weather? Would you like more information on hotels? Right? Would you like more? And so the natural kind of thought processes, you start going down, it starts answering questions for you. So in our case, it's like, you know, Munich to Salzburg to Vienna, right? Or to like all these different places. And, but it was like, you do two days and then another two days and another two days. And then you can basically say,

 

replace this city with that city and it recalculates the total time or the weather or the this or the that. The more I play with the stuff, it's just really cool to help you figure out where to go. The one thing it doesn't have is anything current. So if something happened three months ago in

 

Brandon Giella (03:57.145)

Sure. Yep.

 

Nowell Outlaw (04:04.817)

in Prague, right, and you don't want to go there for whatever reason, know, major smog alert or something, it would have no idea, right? It would just be like, no, go, it's always sunny. But as a tool, it's super, super powerful, right?

 

Brandon Giella (04:22.383)

Yeah. Especially if you're going to a place where you don't know much about that region or that area, and you don't want to, you know, get on, let's say Google maps and add, stop, add, stop, add, stop to calculate the distance. We did that for a Italy trip that we were thinking about, wanted to fly into Milan, do Northern Italy, see a couple of us at, you know, Venice and maybe, what was that?

 

Nowell Outlaw (04:34.84)

Correct.

 

Brandon Giella (04:46.221)

Cinque Terre, you know, all that whole area. And it plotted out the whole trip for us. Like you're saying, the whole itinerary, depending on where we want to go, how many days we were there. But you, you. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

 

Nowell Outlaw (04:52.081)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's also, well, as was gonna say, it also plots cost, right? So you can say, I wanna go to stay in Switzerland. well, be prepared to spend $500 a night. But you could also tell it that's too expensive and it might suggest other places to stay, right?

 

Brandon Giella (05:14.841)

Yeah, I love that. I love it because it changes the way that you think about...

 

I don't know interacting with a place or thinking about a place or finding discovering exploring new Maybe facets to a place that you wouldn't otherwise think about like you're saying it's got the suggestions You know and funny enough there was this article that came out on the Wall Street Journal over the weekend Said that googling is for old people and it was saying that most people now are on perplexity or they're on clod or they're on some of these other tools that This is this is how people find information now So I'm curious if you

 

Nowell Outlaw (05:22.321)

Mm-hmm.

 

Nowell Outlaw (05:30.566)

for sure.

 

Nowell Outlaw (05:43.577)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

 

Brandon Giella (05:49.953)

you have any tools that are like go-to for you or do you notice any ways that you're thinking about how you're not Googling anymore? I think you mentioned that before we started recording. were like, you know, I'm not even like Googling this stuff anymore.

 

Nowell Outlaw (06:02.427)

Bye.

 

I'm a big believer in Claude just because I like the way it works. It seems to be easier for me than ChatGPT. And it's pretty amazing the things that you can have it do and calculate values. So you can literally go to it and say, build me a week-long itinerary in Germany for less than $5,000, and it'll build it out.

 

Brandon Giella (06:32.375)

Mm.

 

Nowell Outlaw (06:34.129)

Draw me a map of this and it gives you a really simple map right of these cities and where the lot there's no map underneath it. It's just really basic stuff. But I do spend a lot of my time. Probably my first tool that I reference now is asking the question of Claude, right? So we're doing a project with a new customer and it requires European licensing. Some other stuff. It's very complex.

 

Brandon Giella (06:53.454)

Hmm.

 

Brandon Giella (07:03.544)

Yeah.

 

Nowell Outlaw (07:03.825)

And, you know, have three lawyers that are travel attorneys that we use, right? Plus I have this AI tool and it's weird because it, it helps me find an answer quick. And I have yet to find a situation where it's wrong and the lawyer's right. Right. And, and, and so the thing is, is that no one person has all this stuff in their head. Right. And so it's a faster way to find and get information.

 

Brandon Giella (07:22.542)

Interesting.

 

Brandon Giella (07:27.949)

Yeah.

 

Nowell Outlaw (07:34.339)

I think just for anybody listening, the best analogy that I think I've started using with people is that in a large language model is like a parrot. Right? So a parrot can only repeat what it's heard. Right? Parrots don't invent new sentences necessarily. They don't come up with complex answers. They can't answer like, how are they feeling today? Unless they say, I'm great. Right? And so

 

When you look at using these tools, they're great at providing answers as long as it's on the web and it's factual and it's things that are digestible by computer. When you get into things that aren't current, or are current and not just history in the past. So let's say you're going to Germany and three months ago there was a huge labor strike and now it's not someplace you should go.

 

Brandon Giella (08:14.095)

Mm-hmm.

 

Brandon Giella (08:21.198)

you

 

Nowell Outlaw (08:32.695)

it's not going to know that, right? So even though you might plan, you know, a tour or something that you're doing on it, and that might be great. It's, it's then, it's kind of the first step. And then the next step is, okay, let's make sure there's no, you know, department of state issued like security things, or let's Google about the city and make sure there's no alerts because, we've flown, we've been in places where there's strike, minor strikes going on and

 

Brandon Giella (08:34.178)

Yeah.

 

Nowell Outlaw (09:01.837)

It's pretty scary, right? When people are throwing rocks at your cars and they're burning tires and doing all kinds of stuff. That's not a fun place to be.

 

Brandon Giella (09:03.488)

Mm-hmm.

 

Brandon Giella (09:09.902)

Yeah.

 

Yeah. I've always said with a lot of these AI tools, it's, really is a garbage in garbage out. You've got to give it enough context for it to do its thing and work through the kind of questions that you're, you're thinking about. But I think you're really limited by your imagination. Truly. I think like in the context of travel, you know, thinking like, okay, I can plan out this itinerary, but then it's like, well, help me look at like some recipes or some things that I should be eating while I'm there. Or, I mean, like to your point, all these kinds of like suggestions that you can get out of it. It's, it's really fascinating.

 

Nowell Outlaw (09:17.425)

for sure.

 

Nowell Outlaw (09:34.191)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Brandon Giella (09:40.272)

Thank

 

Nowell Outlaw (09:40.901)

Yeah, the thing I don't like about it, and this is not me going off the dark side, is that a large language model has crawled, if you will, public domain information like websites, right? And if you're someone, take recipes as an example, who has put out your best recipes on your website, but you're making advertising dollars by having consumers come to it, or maybe you're also there able to sell your book.

 

Brandon Giella (09:56.451)

Mm-hmm.

 

Brandon Giella (10:04.61)

Yeah.

 

Nowell Outlaw (10:10.705)

That revenue stream has been cut off for you, right? I like to cook. just we had 50 people at our house. I made a bunch of Pork loins I use Claude to help me assemble the recipes. It was off on the time, but that's okay And and you realize like the person that originally came up with that is nowhere to be found Right. And so there's a there's a problem gap because I don't think I think

 

Brandon Giella (10:14.222)

Yeah.

 

Brandon Giella (10:24.034)

Yeah.

 

You

 

Brandon Giella (10:33.656)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Nowell Outlaw (10:38.615)

know, Claude and these tools have figured out how to monetize their revenue. But in the world that they captured all that data from, there is a revenue stream that's associated with those people and it's being cut off, right? And even Google crawled just a piece of it and you click on the link and then you go there. Google made the money from the clicks, right? You know, for these other tools like Claude, you have to pay, like you have to be a paying subscriber to use them. So.

 

Brandon Giella (10:42.553)

Yeah.

 

Brandon Giella (10:52.162)

Yeah.

 

Brandon Giella (10:56.792)

Yeah.

 

Brandon Giella (11:06.477)

Yeah, agreed. And obviously is a massive topic, but yeah, I mean, to the point of the recipe maker, you know, yes, their revenue is shut off because of the advertising. If even that recipe that you're being, that you're retrieving is one recipe from one individual person. Like I found my wife cooks a lot with them and it's like, Hey, I've got these. She'll tell it. I've got these five ingredients. Like, what should I make with that? And then I'll give her a.

 

Nowell Outlaw (11:09.777)

Yeah, for sure.

 

Nowell Outlaw (11:26.596)

If it is,

 

Brandon Giella (11:36.353)

list, you know, and all that sort of thing. And it's an amalgamation of a bunch of different recipes. But yeah, it's a massive thing. I mean, even the article from Wall Street Journal, it said that it was saying by 2025, Google, their advertising revenue is or the this is the estimated share of US search advertising revenue going down to 48 % for Google in 2025. And Amazon is actually the one that's climbing from 10 to 25 % over the last seven years or so. And so it's just like this massive shift in the way that

 

Nowell Outlaw (11:39.633)

Yeah.

 

Nowell Outlaw (12:03.557)

Wow. Yep.

 

Brandon Giella (12:06.618)

That we're interacting with information to begin with. Yeah, it's a massive thing

 

Nowell Outlaw (12:11.377)

But I think with travel, it's going to change as well. We have large language models on our platform, all this other stuff, helping make recommendations and all these other things. And I think that the consumer is just going to be more factual. You're going to be able to process information to go, that's interesting. And now it's kind of build your own adventure.

 

Hey, I want to go to Germany and I want to do a boat river tour and a, know, give me the top, what I was querying earlier today was, you know, the top train trips in Europe. Right. And it's like, you could do this one in Switzerland, this one here, this one there. Tell me about that one. it prompts you for like, no, would you like to go here? You can stay, you stay at this town that has no cars, right? You can do all this other stuff. And it's for me as a user.

 

it's faster, right? I could, I would have to pour through tons of pages to get these answers, but it kind of gives you a quick starting point in the matter of minutes, right? That you can go, hey, interesting ideas. Now you sit down with your spouse and go, you know, or, know, whoever your family or you're going by yourself, this is the itinerary that I think I'm going to do. You know, what do we think? And including, you know, you can then ask it and say things like,

 

Brandon Giella (13:14.734)

Yeah.

 

Brandon Giella (13:30.968)

Yeah.

 

Nowell Outlaw (13:37.137)

What's it going to cost for the train travel? And they'll say, know, you know, if you're doing economy or, you know, coach or business or first class or whatever, and break it down by route for you, right? Is it cheaper to go on the bus? How much would it be on the bus? Outline, you know, give me the cost breakdown between bus, car rental, Uber, train, flying, and bike, right?

 

can probably break down those costs for you. It's pretty cool because it's an efficient way to get to the root answer, which is how much is it going to cost me.

 

Brandon Giella (14:08.975)

Mm.

 

And also you can start to ask it. This is one of my favorite questions. What am I not thinking of? What's a question I should have asked that I didn't. it's just to see, you know, what kind of things that it sparked so much creativity for me. Like I said, the imagination component, but back to what we were talking about, with it kind of altering or displacing others revenue who used to do this by hand. I'm curious your thoughts of, of like somebody, you know, creating a recipe travel agents were the ones that would put these kind of itineraries together.

 

Nowell Outlaw (14:39.665)

for sure.

 

Brandon Giella (14:39.829)

What do you think about their role now in the next 10 years? Or you have other travel platforms like Switchfly or other platforms that you can kind of put these bundles together in these packages and the user does their own research. But now with the introduction of these tools, how do you think about some of those things changing?

 

Nowell Outlaw (15:00.017)

I think that what you're going to find is that travel agents are going to use the tool, right? I think you have people who want to pick up the phone and say, hey, I need a 10-day trip in Germany in and out of Munich. Can you put something together for me? There are people like that. And they don't want to do the research into it. A travel agent will put the whole thing together, including hotels, train tickets, everything. So you just boom, and you're done.

 

Brandon Giella (15:05.239)

Well, sure, yeah, right.

 

Nowell Outlaw (15:30.061)

And so I think the travel agents though, will use a tool like an AI tool to help them figure out and solve the best route for them, especially if it's an area they don't know anything in, right? Or don't have the best knowledge. And so it helps them probably be a better travel agent than anything. Do I think it's going to put a bunch of travel agents out of work? I don't because I think the age breakdowns between people who use travel agents today.

 

And you know, millennials, Gen X, like all these different groups. Some, some people don't use travel agents like someone else on the podcast here, right? Exactly. Who, who never use a travel agent because you're doing all this research, right? you know, when you get into complex fares, no, let's say you're taking a family of 15, you want to go on a cruise, you want to go to Alaska, you want to do all this other stuff.

 

Brandon Giella (16:08.782)

Never. I've never used such a religion.

 

Nowell Outlaw (16:26.949)

That's where travel agents come in super handy, especially when it's like, got, you know, four people coming from Pittsburgh, three people coming from Dallas, two people coming from whatever they can take care of all of that. Right. I need a hotel for 15 people. need this. I need that, you know, large group tours, all of those things. Those are all the complexities when it comes in. When it's just, you know, your spouse and you, maybe a kid, Hey, we're just going in and out of a

 

you know, we just went to Seattle for Thanksgiving, boom, back, probably aren't gonna use a travel agent for that. You know, doing a more complex trip is good. And I think the best ones are the ones who have been to the places because they can tell you about places you may not think about, right? Like, hey, you know, there's a five-star hotel here, but it's crowded and obnoxious. If you go around the corner, there's one that's four-star, but it's quieter and it's more...

 

Romantic right and there's there's like value qualifiers that I think they add to the shopping equation

 

Brandon Giella (17:24.75)

Yeah.

 

Brandon Giella (17:30.594)

Yeah. We have our second baby coming in June. And so our travel itineraries are going to get a lot more complex. And I made the mistake of not thinking about taxis in London when we were there in April and how much that added up getting private cars or where we needed to go to different things anyway. So I should have used a travel agent and I didn't because I'm dumb, but you you get there.

 

Nowell Outlaw (17:37.371)

Ha ha!

 

Nowell Outlaw (17:47.835)

Correct.

 

Nowell Outlaw (17:51.535)

Yeah, no, you never know. it's, mean, and, the thing is, is that people think that they travel agents are more expensive. It's not necessarily true, right? Some of them there's a booking fee or things for airlines and things, but you know, they're there to serve you. And I'll tell you the best thing about a travel agent, quite frankly, is when something happens, right? So if you're taking the trip to Germany and you know, something happens and you need someone's help, they're there to help you, right?

 

And so they're able to reroute, reschedule, I need a better hotel, you know, my wife's sick, I need to do this, do that. It's super helpful in a lot of times to be able to do that with people.

 

Brandon Giella (18:32.312)

Yep, yep, agree that a robot cannot yet do for you. So

 

Nowell Outlaw (18:35.887)

Correct, and probably won't ever be able to.

 

Brandon Giella (18:39.116)

Amen. Well, no, thank you. I now have a lot more of a ideas and imagination for when I do my next trip, which is coming up in a few weeks. So I'll need to ask some more questions. All right. Well, we will see you next time.

 

Nowell Outlaw (18:49.841)

Cool. All right. All right, thanks, Brandon.