I asked ChatGPT to plan my trip with a budget of $3,500

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There has been a lot of hype around the AI ​​chatbot ChatGPT and how it can make tasks easier – and I wondered if that usefulness could extend to plan trips.

I went to Switzerland in October, traveling to three different cities on a limited budget and time. I was hoping that ChatGPT would help me avoid some tedious research about all the logistics.

But I learned that AI chatbot is not quite a personal assistant and a travel agent some TikTokers made it seem so.

I asked ChatGPT to plan my trip to Switzerland and divided my request into a few categories

Here is the prompt I gave to ChatGPT:

Plan me a trip to Switzerland, where I will visit Zurich, Sion and St. Moritz in early October. I'm flying from San Francisco. My budget is $3,500.

Here is what I expect from you:

return flights,

a means of travel between cities in Switzerland,

accommodation places in each city,

Things to do,

food to eat,

a packing list

Since ChatGPT can't view live internet, I didn't expect it to remove the current flight prices or hotels.

OpenAI announcement that it added internet browsing functionality to the chatbot at the end of September (after I had already booked my trip). For now, it is only available to paid subscribers.

Even without live internet access, I hoped ChatGPT would tell me my airline options, the cheapest flights, or hotels that could combine to fit my budget.

This is not the case.

ChatGPT's suggestions for my trip to Switzerland weren't very helpful

For flights, ChatGPT was pretty vague and only gave me an estimated budget of between $800 and $1,200. I ended up paying more than that for the cheapest direct flights, $1,398.95.

He noted that early October – the only time I said I was considering – might be a nice time of year to visit due to the weather, but did not suggest days to book flights in order to save money.

One good tip the bot gave me was to buy a Swiss Travel Pass and take the train everywhere I went. Looking through a few travel blogs, I already knew that this was probably my cheapest and most effective option.

For accommodation, ChatGPT divided my trip into several chunks: three nights in Zurich, two nights in Sion, and four nights in St. Moritz, but didn't provide many details for each location.

Many suggestions were simple to the point of not being helpful, simply stating “hotel” or “hostel” as a place to stay on a budget.

The AI ​​robot's suggestions ended with a few travel reminders, but many of them were things I already knew, like packing multiple layers of clothing and getting a travel adapter for Swiss outlets.

The only really helpful part of the answer was the food suggestions.

ChatGPT basically told me about the same regional specialties I learned about watching a 20-minute YouTube video: going to dinner in Zurich's old town, trying raclette in Sion, and eating barley soup in Saint-Georges. Moritz.

I also liked that it gave me three different accommodation budget levels for each city.

Ultimately, though, I chose my stays by searching Navan and Airbnb to see what was available on the dates I wanted and choosing the cheapest with a central location in the town I was staying in.

I gave ChatGPT a second chance to act as a personal assistant, but it still failed

After returning from my trip, I thought maybe I hadn't been clear enough about what I wanted. Perhaps I needed a more specific prompt.

After all, ChatGPT has never gone on a trip before. He doesn't really know all the flight research, number crunching and time planning that can be involved.

So I tried to push him to his limits when it came to travel planning. Here is what I wrote:

This is a good overview, but I want you to plan my entire trip for me. You are my personal assistant. Choose my flight and hotels according to my budget. Give me a breakdown of how much everything costs – flights, transportation, hotels, food, etc. – and make sure it all adds up to $3,500 or less.

This prompted the bot to give me a line-by-line budget breakdown, which was closer to what I was looking for. Yet his accommodation recommendations were as basic as a “hostel” or “guesthouse.”

He also underestimated the cost of flights (saying it would cost about $1,000 round trip) and meals.

He suggested only $50 a day for food. This might work if I shopped and prepared every dinner and most lunches, but when I was in Switzerland, almost every restaurant meal alone cost around $50.

I confidently concluded that I am a better trip planner than ChatGPT. It didn't save me any time either.

In the future, I think I'll stick to travel blogs, YouTube videos, and websites like Skyscanner to plan my trips.