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Airbnb CEO says it's still too early for AI trip planning

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Re: Airbnb CEO says it's still too early for AI trip planning

#41

Post by cyberlurker »

ghxst wrote: post #38
chvid wrote: post #22

Why would anyone use an AI trip planner? If I go for a vacation, planning it and deciding what not to plan is a part of the joy of doing it. Though a big problem at the moment is manipulation of online reviews and recommendations; and as far as I can tell AI is making that worse.

From my experience, there are tons of interesting places in my country that hardly get talked about online outside of my native language. You won’t really find them on the SEO-boosted travel blogs that google likes to return either. I feel like this is where AI could actually be useful.

But… isn’t the AI going to parrot those travel blogs?

Re: Airbnb CEO says it's still too early for AI trip planning

#42

Post by akdev1l »

ghxst wrote: post #38
chvid wrote: post #22

Why would anyone use an AI trip planner? If I go for a vacation, planning it and deciding what not to plan is a part of the joy of doing it. Though a big problem at the moment is manipulation of online reviews and recommendations; and as far as I can tell AI is making that worse.

From my experience, there are tons of interesting places in my country that hardly get talked about online outside of my native language. You won’t really find them on the SEO-boosted travel blogs that google likes to return either. I feel like this is where AI could actually be useful.

If it’s not talked about much, it won’t be in the training dataset much

Re: Airbnb CEO says it's still too early for AI trip planning

#43

Post by iamleppert »

Last time I used ChatGPT to plan my trip it was a disaster. There’s something about the overly optimistic attitude that paints everything and everywhere as great, when the fact is, as a traveler, a lot of places are absolutely garbage or just too bizarre for words.

On ChatGPT’s advice, I ended up checked into a hotel on the grounds of a United Methodist Encampment, complete with check in/out stations manned by angry boomers. Really didn’t see that one coming!

Re: Airbnb CEO says it's still too early for AI trip planning

#44

Post by senko »

eloisius wrote: post #24
chvid wrote: post #22

Why would anyone use an AI trip planner? If I go for a vacation, planning it and deciding what not to plan is a part of the joy of doing it. Though a big problem at the moment is manipulation of online reviews and recommendations; and as far as I can tell AI is making that worse.

Everything should be a curated feed of slop. Even your travels.

This pretty much describes most of mainstream media and news pre-AI as well.

Re: Airbnb CEO says it's still too early for AI trip planning

#45

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #40
aimazon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Travel can be as easy as you want it to be if you are willing to spend money and/or plan. Stay at hotels that are part of a hotel group (e.g: Marriott) and check-in will be seamless. Use airport transfers and someone will be waiting at the airport with a sign and take you straight to the hotel (any reputable hotel will arrange it for you at a fair price). Use a global e-sim that you can activate when your plane lands…

I guess next time I should ask my personal assistant to arrange it all for me.

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb CEO says it's still too early for AI trip planning

#46

Post by iLoveOncall »

soulofmischief wrote: post #12
ElectRabbit wrote: post #2

LLMs are stellar for trip planning. They can spit out a lot of potential options for a country or region. I just add all the suggestions to a map and then plan way around them. Also doing some manual research like opening times. Why I love this? I really don't want to research too deep into my destinations as this kills a lot of the magic seeing seeing them in person.

Plenty of positives, but consider the negatives with current-generation language models. It takes one hallucination to put your life in danger.

> to put your life in danger

Or much more likely, to waste your time. DeepSeek recommended us to visit a place that was actually privately owned and couldn't be visited at all. Traditional methods (Google Maps, TripAdvisor, etc.) never would have.

Re: Airbnb CEO says it's still too early for AI trip planning

#47

Post by stavros »

dangus wrote: post #39
CharlieDigital wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founder of Viator had an interesting take on this in an interview (How I Built This [0]). The gist is that the people who deeply research and plan, they create this perfect vision of the trip in their head. When you actually go on the trip, things can go wrong; weather is bad, destination was crowded, you got sick, etc. But years later, the perfect version of the trip and the actual version of the trip get mixed…

I think this if taken too far sounds a lot like work. One of my favorite trips involved planning as far as a train trip and booking a hostel. But beyond that my group basically blew off every plan we had and hung around the hostel because they had a really nice free pool table and really good cheap food and booze. That is probably one of my top three trips of my life. I find my memories compressed because it was basi…

It's great that you had a fun time hanging out with friends, but spending a few days with friends around a pool table and bar isn't really a trip, it's a gathering. Trips tend to be centered around the place you're going to, with experiences you can only have at that place, and nowhere else.

Re: Airbnb CEO says it's still too early for AI trip planning

#48

Post by soulofmischief »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #46
soulofmischief wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of positives, but consider the negatives with current-generation language models. It takes one hallucination to put your life in danger.

> to put your life in danger Or much more likely, to waste your time. DeepSeek recommended us to visit a place that was actually privately owned and couldn't be visited at all. Traditional methods (Google Maps, TripAdvisor, etc.) never would have.

Just last week I was looking up how much of some chemical was required for toxic effects, and Google's AI response, sitting right at the top, gave me a number that was off by magnitudes. I ignored it and found a factual answer by corroborating multiple sources. That is the difference between life and death.

> DeepSeek recommended us to visit a place that was actually privately owned and couldn't be visited at all.

One time some friends of mine got the wrong address for a party. When they showed up, a man was sitting on his porch with a shotgun, and he shot at their car multiple times while they hurriedly backed out of his driveway. A wrong address can be deadly, especially in unknown territory.

And please understand, I have personally created prototype agentic booking systems with route planning, concierge integrations and more. I am very excited about this space but also extremely cautious knowing exactly where cutting LLMs are and aren't useful enough not only for trusting your business logic with them, but trusting the safety of your customers.

Re: Airbnb CEO says it's still too early for AI trip planning

#49

Post by ElectRabbit »

troupo wrote: post #19
ElectRabbit wrote: post #2

LLMs are stellar for trip planning. They can spit out a lot of potential options for a country or region. I just add all the suggestions to a map and then plan way around them. Also doing some manual research like opening times. Why I love this? I really don't want to research too deep into my destinations as this kills a lot of the magic seeing seeing them in person.

> They can spit out a lot of potential options for a country or region. If you're going to all the crowded tourist-y places, sure. It's a struggle to make them suggest anything off the beaten path for obvious reasons

I tested it with several places I know very well from my "manually planed" tours. It was "aware" of them all. Even the more hidden recommendations.

Re: Airbnb CEO says it's still too early for AI trip planning

#50

Post by ElectRabbit »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #6
ElectRabbit wrote: post #2

LLMs are stellar for trip planning. They can spit out a lot of potential options for a country or region. I just add all the suggestions to a map and then plan way around them. Also doing some manual research like opening times. Why I love this? I really don't want to research too deep into my destinations as this kills a lot of the magic seeing seeing them in person.

That's just inferior to going on Tripadvisor and looking at the list of things to do. Tripadvisor will have the same activities, but you have user reviews, pictures, you can book tickets, etc.

TA is IMHO far from useable when planing complex tours in a country.

I even prefer reading Reddit travel reports or indexes of travel books for reading stuff on that website.

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