The creators of artificial intelligence-powered travel technology say that doing everything from planning your dream trip to maximizing your points of loyalty to talking about cool buildings on the streets can make your life easier.
But can they really do it?
The answer comes after putting some of the biggest players in the test.
A large number of seemingly identical AI travel planners can help you lay out your itinerary and find hotels and restaurants. The best can match conversation-style chatbots like Openai's ChatGpt or Google's Gemini.
Of course, travel planning tools also have the same drawbacks as AI programs. You may not always have access to the latest data and sometimes you don't have any details about sites like Google Flights and sometimes it forms things.
But there are ways to make the most of them. We received advice from experts and tested these travel planners and AI-powered tools to help you develop your hotel and airline points and translate conversations. This is how they do it.
Expedia Trip Matching
Task: Turn your Instagram reel into a vacation itinerary.
This well-designed travel planner is easy to use. When you see an Instagram reel about destinations you are interested in visiting, you will send it to Expedia via direct message to share with your friends. The AI chatbot will start a conversation and ask about your preferences – “Are you more interested in history, food, nature, nightlife, etc?” – and adjust the location recommendations based on your response.
Jochen Koedijk, Chief Marketing Officer of Expedia Group, said the travel match was designed for people who are still messing around with ideas and have not yet planned their trip. “We wanted to serve travelers who saw something and said, 'Hey, this is amazing. What is it?” ”
Trip Matching provides a link to book a hotel on the spot in case you feel impulsive.
Like other AI tools, trip matching has some issues. It provided general activity recommendations for my destination and repeatedly suggested staying in a hotel with little or none on the date I wanted. When asked to find a flight for an imaginary vacation in Central Asia, he proposed considering a layover in Moscow despite the continued war with Ukraine being dangerous for Americans.
Mind Trip
Task: Provide travel suggestions tailored based on your interests.
The excellent visual gives this ChatGpt style trip planning tool an edge. Its interface, lively conversations with the chatbots, includes detailed maps and photos of each attraction or accommodation. First, take a short quiz and help you adjust the bot's suggestions to your interests. If you're not sure what follow-up questions to ask, MindTrip can help with that too. That “you might want to ask” feature suggests a prompt that allows you to unlock details of locations of interest.
Once you narrow down your options, you can get details from humans. MindTrip features around 30,000 guides created by content creators and other users. You can book several hotels directly via MindTrip. This means you earn a fee when you book that site.
The lack of mind trips is flights. The site says there is no “specific flight pricing or availability” for certain routes, and although internet searches quickly incurred airfares for several destinations, the tool seemed more accurate for domestic flights than international flights.
MindTrip is free, but you will need to create an account after the first few messages.
Leila
Task: Provide travel planning advice with your emotions in mind.
To hear Layla CEO Saad Saeed say it, this tool works best when sharing your feelings with it.
“AI is a really good thing early in the journey when you don't know exactly what you want and can really express what you feel and why you want to travel,” Saeed said.
“Spoilers,” he added.
With a curly young woman avatar, Leila has a design similar to mind trips – a text interface for conversation and a spread of maps and photos – but Leila may need some prompts to hone her visuals. Additionally, with a $49 annual membership, you can unsallow up to 20% at select hotels around the world.
Big difference: conversation tone. When I told Layla that I was planning a trip to Vermont this fall, it asked a few questions and then she said, “Shack me with Diet, Yikes.
Another downside is that Layla provides less than 10 messages before hitting the paywall. Before that, you can still get a fair amount of information, but I found recommendations on where to rent a kayak at Lake Champlain and found out there are 100 covered bridges in Vermont. I wasn't sure it was worth paying when other platforms offered comparable platforms for free.
gondola
Task: Maximize your loyalty points and miles.
The Gondola offers to help you find the best deal in the universe that will cause confusion in the loyalty program.
Users can grant permission for Gondola to scan your email inbox to book a trip or enter information manually. For example, if you have points at Marriott, Hilton, or Hyatt, you can search all three at once on the gondola. Options display cash and point rates side by side, along with the points you earn from each option. You can book your hotel directly via Gondola.
The site also monitors airfares and room rates after booking flights or hotels, so if prices go down, you can rebook at a lower rate. However, you cannot book flights directly on the site.
Gondola's target audience is people who travel more than 10 times a year, said co-founder Skyler Erickson.
“Our goal is like a traveler who knows you're going to spend two nights in San Francisco,” he said. “What is the best way to do that?”
Gondola has an open-ended text box, but this site mainly serves as a comparison tool rather than an idea generator.
Ray-Ban Meta Glass
Task: Get travel information on the spot.
By this point you've already got on your flight, checked in to the hotel and headed out to see the views. What is that landmark in front of you? Ask your glasses.
Ray-Ban Metagrass uses AI to tell you about the historic looking fountain-like objects in Rome that you want to identify. All you have to do is say, “Hey, meta.” The instant audio response will be displayed. There is also live audio translations between English, Spanish, French and Italian. That's impressive until you think Google Translate has around 250 language options.
Glasses starting at $299 come in a variety of frames and lens colors and can be purchased using sunglasses (polarized or blue light glasses, or transition lenses, and a prescription). According to Meta, the battery life is around four hours with “medium use.” Most AI features require a mobile phone's internet connection.
And of course, the glasses have a camera. Photos and videos are saved on the Meta AI smartphone app, and the lights on the glasses warn others that they are being recorded. But reasonable people may oppose whether it's easier to take photos with glasses than pulling out your phone. – ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in the New York Times.
