People are increasingly leaning on artificial intelligence (AI) to do everything in their lives, from writing emails to running their business to organizing their credit card benefits. So it only makes sense that more and more travelers are also turning to these tools to help plan trips.
I'll admit: I've resisted it. I think travel needs a human touch that AI can't provide … not to mention all the other (justifiable) reasons many steer clear: its significant drain of water and electricity; replacing our critical thinking; and whether there's a bubble that may soon burst.
But AI is here, and it's not going away. More and more of you are using it to plan trips, unearth those can't-miss sites, and maybe even find better deals. So with my own trip to Finnish Lapland coming up in just a few weeks, I decided to test out five of the most popular AI tools to see how their recommendations stacked up against my months of planning. While most of them offer enhanced paid products, I used their free versions for an apples-to-apples comparison.
The result? Each chatbot had some strengths and weaknesses, and none were as detailed or personal as what I put together … obviously. But there were some helpful recommendations, particularly for restaurants and locking down reservations. For flights and vacation rentals, however, they fell far short.
And one stood far, far above the rest.
The Prompt
AI chatbots are only as much help as the information you give them.
I did my best to put together as comprehensive a prompt as possible for my upcoming trip. That said, it's a learned skill that I'm still getting better at. Bottom line: The more information and back-and-forth you give a chatbot, the better the results will be.
From my past experiences with AI chatbots, I knew they can't help you find real-time business class award availability. No worries: I planned this entire trip around booking Finnair business class flights from Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) to Helsinki (HEL) with Finnair Avios. So I didn't ask the bots to try and figure that out. Instead, I just listed the two departure airports and let them do their best.
Here's what I fed each AI chatbot:
Plan me a trip for four adults and an infant from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) to Finnish Lapland in December sometime before Christmas. We want a trip between 7 and 10 days. We want to spend at least one night in Helsinki. We want to visit Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi. We can stay at either hotels or vacation rentals. Include recommendations for daytime activities and restaurants for dinner each night. We are an adventurous group that likes snowshoeing and outdoor winter activities, and we want to experience a Finnish sauna, too. We want sufficient downtime each day, too, because we have an infant.
It was important to me to emphasize that we're traveling with an infant so the bots didn't over-plan our days. We knew we needed to go to Rovaniemi and Santa Claus Village, and we knew we wanted to visit Helsinki for at least one night, too. Other than that, I gave it some vague ideas about snowshoeing and outdoor winter activities and asked it to plan us one dinner out each night.
And then I let the bots have at it! And to conduct this unscientific experiment, I went with five AI chatbots I'd heard of and that I've seen travelers recommend using. This list is by no means comprehensive: I know there are several others, including some travel-specific tools that people swear by as well.
Here's what these five major chatbots put together for me.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT, from OpenAI, is the most ubiquitous AI chatbot. I've heard from many travelers who sing this platform's praises as a way to help plan trips. But like all the chatbots, it is limited in what it can do as far as finding flights or vacation rentals.
Ultimately, I like that ChatGPT cites its sources right there in the search results so you can go look for yourself or do further research. I also thought it offered a good amount of optionality in travel – offering more than one option for both activities and dinners.
The level of detail was helpful. I like that it dug into the daylight planning, which can be minimal in December in Finland … (which is the entire point if you're chasing the Northern Lights!) So it brought that up right away to help plan the trip.
The day-by-day itinerary was well laid-out and easy to follow, too, again with its sources cited each step of the way. I especially liked that it tried to plan nap times for the infant each day. Of course, infants don't care much for schedules and will nap (or not nap) as they damn well please, but it's a smart inclusion from ChatGPT.
Some of the other information was helpful, including some suggestions to massage the length of the trip in order to add more time in Helsinki.
Finally, the booking checklist was really smart. It told me which of the dinners would need reservations and where to book saunas, too.
Bottom line: ChatGPT got the job done. It lacked flight and vacation rental detail that I would have liked were I starting from scratch, but otherwise served up a good itinerary that could be useful as a starting point to plan a trip or to fill in the gaps here and there.
Gemini
Google's Gemini is another well-known chatbot that can whip up a solid itinerary. The platform is more stylish than ChatGPT, too, giving you a more organized itinerary in a chart-like form.
Gemini needed some prodding to spit out some of the details I wanted, opting at first to give a more bare-bones look at things.
Maybe the best part about Gemini is that button at the bottom of each item, “Export to Sheets.” This allows you to make a Google Sheet of your trip – handy, if you're a spreadsheet-fluent person.
Gemini falls a little short in offering direct booking links or offering specifics. There were no tour operators or booking companies listed in the first draft. When pressed for more detail, though, Gemini provided.
Gemini also offered some really good tips – especially for traveling with an infant.
When prompted at the end of the listing to look for flight prices and availability, Gemini pulled in flights from its friend Google Flights to give you a one-click option to take a look. This is a handy feature … even if the prices and suggestions were quite ugly.
The platform did the same for hotels through Google Hotels listings, too.
Bottom line: Gemini offered up the basics in a clean, easy-to-read way. If you're a hardcore trip planner like me, and want to fill in a lot of the details yourself anyway, Gemini is a great jumping-off point to start planning your trip.
Claude
Claude is another AI chatbot I hadn't personally used, but I left my quick search very impressed with the look and functionality of the tool. The design is really great, with two columns – one offering a summary, and another going in-depth.
Plus, Claude was the most budget-conscious travel planner of the chatbots – offering constant reminders of the estimated costs of things and even totaling it all up at the end.
Claude paid very close attention to detail as well, offering options for transit that other chatbots did not. Like most of its competitors, it fell short when it came to flight options.
In the day-by-day itinerary, Claude also recommended which restaurants will need reservations. The most impressive part about Claude, however, was the extra details at the bottom. For instance, it pulled together a full packing list for the time of year we'd be in Finland – including an infant packing list!
But what really set Claude apart from its competitors was the incredible attention to detail when it comes to budgeting. Every item in the itinerary came with an estimated price tag, giving you a really great glimpse at what your trip might end up costing.
It even rounded up the final costs into a grand total at the bottom of the page – an exceptionally useful tool overall.
Finally, Claude also wrangled up some booking notes, including what is most urgent to reserve and how far in advance those things typically get booked up.
Bottom line: Claude was a seriously impressive trip-planning chatbot that offered me a ton of new ideas and tips for my own itinerary and included something else no other chatbot did: A line item-by-line item cost breakdown.
Deepseek
Deepseek is far less stylish than competitors like Claude or Gemini – trading in the look for some more specificity when I asked it to plan this Finland trip.
I liked this “pre-trip essentials” section showing me some key considerations and even offering baby equipment rental companies – something the other bots did not offer.
The day-by-day schedule was more or less exactly what you'd find from the other chatbots, giving many of the same recommendations as the others, just without offering additional options.
I did appreciate that Deepseek offered specifics like tour operators to book with and even grocery store options for travelers who want to save money by not dining out every night.
Bottom line: Deepseek also provided a solid itinerary. It was slightly above the rest in terms of specific tour operators and details like grocery stores, but lacked some in the way of design and customization.
Microsoft CoPilot
Like ChatGPT, CoPilot is helpful in that it cites its sources very clearly when you look through its suggestions. I also liked the layout and format of its results.
The “travel logistics and timing” section at the top was a great primer for the trip. Many of the chatbots jumped right into an itinerary without explaining their thinking first. CoPilot's prologue was helpful.
CoPilot also offered multiple options for every activity and meal – the best of the chatbots at the customization that I think is so important to travel.
The flexibility CoPilot offered was excellent, too. It really took the infant part of my prompt to heart, giving tips on how to have the baby outdoors and how to pace out a day.
Bottom line: The direct citations and the optionality offered by CoPilot made it one of the stronger trip planning chatbots I encountered in this process.
But it wasn't number one…
& The Winner Is…
The powerhouse travel planning team of Gunnar & Claude.
Let's be real: I know exactly what I want out of this trip – more than any AI platform ever could. I've known the four adults I'm traveling with for more than a decade, and the infant is genetically related to me. I, of course, planned the best trip for us.
No matter which AI tool you use, it's going to have major shortcomings in delivering what you want and need out of a trip. We booked vacation rentals instead of hotels – an obvious blind spot for AI chatbots. We wanted to fly business class using points and miles – another area where these bots are less capable.
But I was impressed with how well some of these AI chatbots could plan a day on the ground in a destination that was new to me. The restaurant recommendations, including how far in advance you need to secure reservations, were really impressive – something I plan to use AI for going forward in my travel planning.
For my needs, Claude was the best tool by far. I was blown away by the attention to detail when it came specifically to budgeting and booking the trip. Plus, it offered resources like packing lists, taxi companies, apps to download, and even local weather forecasting tools.
The two-column design showing both a summary and the full extent of its details was also really slick – allowing you to chew on or swallow as much (or as little) as you wanted at one time.
I still don't think any AI chatbot can be a one-and-done for planning an entire trip – at least not yet. But I'll definitely be using Claude going forward to help with trip inspiration, budgeting, and filling out itineraries I'm already working on.
Case in point: I plan to use several tips it offered on my upcoming trip to Lapland, too – including the packing lists, restaurant recommendations, and the booking tips to know what needs booking ahead of time.
Bottom Line
Travel is personal. That's why I hadn't waded into using AI to help plan a trip until now – and why what worked great for me in this first foray may not help you.
While Clause was my favorite tool by far, I still don't think any AI chatbot can be an end-to-end travel planner. Skip them to plan things like flights and vacation rentals – both big blind spots for the platforms, at least for now.
But for helping piece together an itinerary, generating a packing list, recommending restaurants and planning logistics, these tools have a place to help you plan travel smarter – or at least faster.
