AI can help plan out your next international flight, but it's not perfect

14.08.2023 - 03:45 / insider.com

AI is part of the newest wave of technology sweeping across the world, and the next area it's making strides in is helping people travel easier — if you use it in the right areas.

While AI might seem like the answer to all your travel troubles, travel experts caution against trusting software to plan your entire trip. Doing so might lead to itineraries that are too full or don't make sense for your family, Insider previously reported.

Despite these problems, the best place to use AI might be one of the most complex parts of travel to plan — the dreaded international flight.

Some AI bots, like ChatGPT, do not have the ability to search in real-time or browse the internet, which prevents them from booking or finding flights.

Another AI-powered app, though, which works through WhatsApp messages, proved incredibly useful in the search. GuideGeek, which has garnered attention from travel influencers for its capabilities, measured up decently to other travel sites.

Though the guide does not book flights for you, it does allow you to search flights and offers tools like itinerary planning, which includes suggestions based on your budget, the number of people coming with you, and when you are going. It also can provide sightseeing suggestions, down to which restaurants you should try.

In testing GuideGeek, we asked the AI assistant to help us plan a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali, Indonesia, from June 15, 2024, to June 29, 2024.

GuideGeek said its pick for cheapest and "best" roundtrip cost was $1,159.34, with a cumulative travel time of 44 hours and 50 minutes.

Using Google Flights, the exact same search yielded a lowest-round trip cost of $1,389 and a cumulative travel time of 51 hours and 55 minutes, and a best-round trip cost of $1,414 with a total travel time of 44 hours and 50 minutes.

On Expedia, the same flight cost a similar $1,395 roundtrip but had a lengthy travel time of over 70 cumulative hours.

GuideGeek also performed well on another international search for a flight from San Francisco International Airport to London Heathrow Airport, giving slightly cheaper flights than Google Flights and Expedia, but providing faster travel times.

But let's say you wanted to take a trickier trip — perhaps one from Syracuse, New York, to Syracuse, Italy. How does GuideGeek perform in a search like that?

For a 2024 spring break trip from Syracuse to Syracuse, GuideGeek took a long time to develop options. Its "best" rated round trip flight cost $1,510, and its cheapest suggestion cost $1,296.58. Here, it found itself fairly matched by, if not slightly behind, its competitors. On Expedia, the cheapest flight round trip was $1,172; on Google Flights, the