A traveler from New Jersey asked a chatbot for a restaurant near his hotel in Italy. It confirmed the place was open. He walked over. Closed on Mondays. Always has been. The bot’s reply, according to the New York Post: “my bad.” That is AI trip planning in one story.
The Post ran a whole piece of these last week. A hotel “two minutes from the train station” that can only be reached by ferry. A waterfall that does not exist. A traveler who lost thousands at the Milan airport because a chatbot put the tax refund desk on the wrong side of security.
The headline says failures like these are sending people back to travel advisors. I’m a travel advisor, so you’d expect me to cheer.
Here’s the thing. I use AI more hours a day than almost anyone I know. It drafts, it sorts, it checks my math. I would not run my business without it, and I’m not going to tell you to stop using it for your trip.
The failure is not AI. The failure is nobody checking.
Every story in that piece has the same shape. The tool answered in seconds, the answer sounded right, and nobody looked twice until a real person was standing in front of a locked door. A tool that answers in seconds and apologizes in seconds is a research assistant, not a decision maker.
How I use AI trip planning, and the three things I check by hand
So here is how I actually use it. AI gets me to a first draft fast. Then the draft meets three checks before you ever see it.
The booking, against the supplier. Not what a summary says. What the hotel, the cruise line or the airline has on its own record. If the two don’t match, the supplier wins and the draft gets fixed.
The opening days and hours. The Monday restaurant is the easy example. A dinner, a tour or a museum only counts if it is open on the day you are there.
The airport and the ground. Which side of security the desk is on. How you get from the terminal to the room. A hotel that needs a ferry is a fine hotel, as long as you know about the ferry before you land.
None of that is clever. It is just slow, and it is the part AI trip planning skips. The robot does not get stuck at the airport. You do.
You don’t need a $150,000 answer
The same article quotes a firm that charges a $150,000 initiation fee for that second set of eyes. You do not need that. You need a process: draft fast, verify everything, and know who is accountable when the plan meets the airport.
That is how I run the travel side, and it is exactly how I run the bookkeeping side. Same rule, different spreadsheet.
So, honest question: on your last trip, what was the one detail nobody checked until you were standing in front of it?
If you would like your next trip checked before you pack, book a vacation planning consultation. Book a consultation
Or at the very least, sign up for my monthly newsletter so you don’t go hungry in front of a restaurant that is closed.
