5 ms·

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

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.

iLoveOncall 2y ago
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.
- ElectRabbit 2y ago
  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.
soulofmischief 2y ago
Plenty of positives, but consider the negatives with current-generation language models. It takes one hallucination to put your life in danger.
- iLoveOncall 2y ago
  > 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.
  - soulofmischief 2y ago
    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.
troupo 2y ago
> 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
- ElectRabbit 2y ago
  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.
CharlieDigital 2y ago
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 up in your memories. People who didn't plan, didn't have this "idealized" version imprinted. I find this to be true so my spouse and I plan our trips meticulously and research everything. We also capture a detailed log of our trips. And I think this combination really helps to highlight and reinforce the good memories while letting the not so good ones fade. [0] https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-viator-rod-cuthbert/ https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-via...
- dangus 2y ago
  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 basically 5 days of Groundhog Day but it was a great time. Making a daily log sounds miserable to me but then again I strongly dislike journaling. Then again the phenomenon you bring up might contribute to what people love about Disney World so much. You have to do a lot of planning to get a lot out of it, and therefore you remember everything you did clearly because so much time was spent planning. I think I could tell you every restaurant I went to on my last trip since I had to fight for reservations and I was setting each day’s plan months ahead of time.
  - stavros 2y ago
    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.

iLoveOncall 2y ago

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.

ElectRabbit 2y ago
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.

soulofmischief 2y ago

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

iLoveOncall 2y ago
> 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.
- soulofmischief 2y ago
  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.

troupo 2y ago

> 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

ElectRabbit 2y ago
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.

CharlieDigital 2y ago

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 up in your memories. People who didn't plan, didn't have this "idealized" version imprinted. I find this to be true so my spouse and I plan our trips meticulously and research everything. We also capture a detailed log of our trips. And I think this combination really helps to highlight and reinforce the good memories while letting the not so good ones fade. [0] https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-viator-rod-cuthbert/ https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-via...

dangus 2y ago
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 basically 5 days of Groundhog Day but it was a great time. Making a daily log sounds miserable to me but then again I strongly dislike journaling. Then again the phenomenon you bring up might contribute to what people love about Disney World so much. You have to do a lot of planning to get a lot out of it, and therefore you remember everything you did clearly because so much time was spent planning. I think I could tell you every restaurant I went to on my last trip since I had to fight for reservations and I was setting each day’s plan months ahead of time.
- stavros 2y ago
  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.