Planning a trip can be either a hassle or a joy, depending on who you ask. Because the key to orchestrating the perfect trip is time, patience, and research. There’s a ton to consider. For the best flight deals, you have to sift through dozens of offers, and vigilantly strike on the optimal price drop like a Wall Street day trader. Finding the coolest places to check out can involve scouring through hundreds of reviews and battling that nagging suspicion, “Can I trust these Yelp nerds?” Don’t even get us started on finding the right hotel or Airbnb.
Then, once you get it together, you have to condense it all into a well-oiled itinerary? So. Much. Time. If you’re a planner, it might even cross your mind to drop cash on that most antiquated of professions — a travel agent.
Or you can use AI for free.
In case you didn’t know, like a greedy octopus, AI’s getting its hands on virtually every industry and profession. Travel planning is no exception and already AI is making things exponentially more efficient. One of the coolest new AI Travel Startups to emerge is Tripnotes. Founded by Matthew Rosenburg, while still in its infancy form, it’s got the potential to revolutionize how we plan trips.
Like Chat GPT, Tripnotes is a “Generative” model, meaning it can analyze and summarize content (in this case sights, bites, and nightlife) from a large set of information. Basically, it will do all your research in just a few seconds. Then, it uses its language capacities to deliver that content in forms like lists and itineraries. One of the coolest parts of this tool is that it incorporates maps, making its interface user-friendly and visually on point, as you’ll see below.
Though there’s a waitlist to access its full features, we couldn’t wait to test this sucker out.
SAMPLE TRIP — LA “UNDERGROUND MUSIC” WEEKEND
Behold, the homepage. With a glowing, revolving Earth, you can explore any city on the planet with available data. I thought I’d check out Los Angeles, and see if it could plan an “underground music”-themed trip.
Instantly, the atlas zeros in on the desired location and maps out all of Tripnote’s recommendations with a clean design, paired with handy hyperlinks.
And astoundingly, it’s able to organize a whole specialized trip in a matter of seconds.
While this technology is incredible and can save hours of time planning a trip, for some, that pursuit could be an essential aspect of the travel experience. Finding unique places is in and of itself, a journey, and if you want to find the rarest, coolest places, often you have to stumble into them, hear from word of mouth, and venture off the grid. Not all the coolest clubs have a ton of info available online, after all.
While Tripnotes laid out the most optimal underground music vacation on paper, how many dive bars, ciphers, and indie concerts did it overlook? It’s hard to say. Regardless, this technology offers an interesting starting point, which intrepid travelers can add a “more personal, human touch” to.