How to start planning your trip with AI
Plan your next vacation with the help of AI.
Problem solved
- Skyscanner’s Savvy Search and Google’s Gemini are AI-powered tools that can help you plan your trip.
- Both tools will help you find cheap flights, but Gemini was the one that managed to find the cheapest prices.
- If you don't have a destination in mind, Skyscanner's tool is a good starting point.
Get more stories like this by email Sign up for our travel newsletter here.
When booking a flight, you probably want to get the best deal possible. (This is especially true since flights from U.S. airports are more expensive now than they were a few years ago.)
There are already several tools available to help you find affordable flights, such as flight price trackers and low-fare calendars, but what about new AI tools? Travel search engines such as Booking.com, Expedia, and Skyscanner have recently introduced AI-powered features to help customers plan their vacations.
Acting like chatbots, these AI trip planners help travelers plan their trips by searching for accommodations, destinations, and even creating itineraries. Some even help travelers find cheap flights.
Skyscanner's Savvy Search tool, which launched in May, is powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT and “accesses a massive database of more than 18 million flight routes and 80 billion price searches per day to provide you with the best travel recommendations,” Laura Lindsay, global travel trends expert at Skyscanner, told USA TODAY.
Make your trip easier: We tested ChatGPT's itinerary in five tourist destinations in the United States
A Google spokesperson said that Google's own AI tool, Gemini, is a “creativity and productivity tool” that also helps travelers plan their trips. Gemini can also connect and access “relevant information from the Google tools you use every day,” including Google Flights, Google Hotels, Google Maps, and Google Docs, according to a Google spokesperson. This means you can get flight, hotel, and driving directions all in one conversation with Gemini.
I tried out Skyscanner's AI trip planner and Google's Gemini to see if I could find the most affordable round-trip flights to travel from Honolulu to New York for the week of August 18-25. For reference, the cheapest flight I found on Google Flights on Thursday afternoon was $761 round-trip in basic economy class on United Airlines. Here's what I found:
What do you think of Skyscanner's Savvy Search?
After creating an account with Skyscanner, I easily found Savvy Search on the home screen of the mobile app. I had to enter my departure city and answer the question, “What type of trip are you planning?” I quickly typed in, “What are the cheapest flights from Honolulu to New York during the week of August 18-25?”
Savvy Search presented me with “three recommended locations” including New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Not exactly what I asked, but I guess the answer was technically there. I clicked to look at flights to New York and was presented with a list of flights to compare. I could sort by “best,” “cheapest,” “fastest,” and “nonstop,” and I could also choose cabin class and add other travelers.
The cheapest flight I could find was $645 round trip, and while it was cheap, it didn't seem easy: I would have to make my own connections on both my outbound and return flights, which would require me to recheck my bags and go through security again, plus the return trip included an 11-hour layover.
I went ahead and booked, but because Skyscanner is a flight comparison tool, the AI directed me to an external travel platform called DoHop, a travel search engine founded in Iceland that creates “unique connecting flights,” according to its website. I'd never used DoHop before, but when I went ahead and booked, I discovered I'd be charged $32.64 in DoHop booking fees, plus $12.50 for carry-on baggage (free baggage allowance is for personal items only).
The total came to $664.83, about $97 less than what I found on Google Flights.
I also tested Savvy Search to see if it could find cheap flights without a destination in mind (just a budget). It gave me Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Tokyo. The cheapest option to Los Angeles was two direct flights on Alaska Airlines for $341. Again, I was told to book outside, but this time via Kiwi.com.
Booking through third-party vendors like Kiwi or DoHop can be tricky for travelers, especially since airlines and hotels typically aren't responsible if you haven't booked directly with them if things don't go as planned, and third-party support is often not always trustworthy.
Is Tuesday still the best day to book? Here's what major travel platforms discovered about purchasing airline tickets:
What is it like using Google's Gemini to find cheap flights?
I accessed Gemini through the company's website, which requires you to sign in with a Google account, and asked the same questions I asked Skyscanner's Trip Planner. Gemini warned me that it's “not always correct, so be sure to check the details of your upcoming flight.”
Gemini offered five flight options, the cheapest of which was a round-trip flight on United Airlines for $615, $49 less than the price offered by Skyscanner and $146 less than the price I found on Google Flights.
Gemini gave me each flight option and the overall travel time, including layovers, and when I clicked on my preferred flight, it took me directly to Google Flights, where I could book through the airline or make adjustments to my flight.
I tried other prompts, like finding the cheapest flight out of Honolulu for the same dates. (The answer was a flight to Maui for $160 round trip.) That answer was a bit obvious, so I tried again to ask for flights outside of Hawaii. (That was a flight to San Francisco, starting at $354 round trip.) I also asked if August was a cheap time to fly from Honolulu to New York. (No, because summer vacation is peak travel season.)
verdict
When it comes to finding the cheapest flights, Gemini is the best. I like how you can move seamlessly between Gemini and Google Flights. While I wouldn't want to book Skyscanner's cheapest flight, I think it's a useful tool to compare prices and see the range of options. (I might not mind switching myself.)
What I particularly like is that when I asked for cheap flights from Honolulu, Skyscanner's tool recommended a variety of destinations. If you're not sure where you want to go, this is a good place to start (in fact, Lindsay says half of Skyscanner's users do just that). You can also ask Skyscanner for alternatives to a cheap destination and find flights from there.
Overall, both AI tools fit into any passenger’s repertoire when searching for the best flight deals.
Kathleen Wong is a Hawaii-based travel writer for USA Today. She can be reached at kwong@usatoday.com..
