How to use artificial intelligence to simplify your vacation

Ashleay: Hello and welcome to the “In Your Interest!” podcast. My name is Ashleay and this week I'm joined by my colleague Audrey Thibodeau-Poulin, our Innovation Advisor. We'll be talking about how to use artificial intelligence to simplify your vacation planning. So, hi, Audrey.

Audrey: Hello, Ashleay. Thanks for having me.

Ashleay: Oh, thanks for being here. Two of my favorite subjects, AI and vacations. So, the French newspaper La Presse did a survey with 2,000 Canadians on how people plan to use AI to plan a trip. And 43% of Quebecers plan to use AI to plan their next vacation time. So, maybe, you know, you could give us a short summary of what the definition of AI is and how it applies to our daily life.

Audrey: Sure. AI in a short sentence is the simulation of the cognitive capabilities of the human brain. And right now, we see a lot of applications in our daily lives. We can think of Netflix, which recommends a series based on our preferences, on our habits. Google Maps or Waze, also, that suggest ways to go somewhere, based on the traffic and on our habits.

Ashleay: Right. And can we use AI to help plan vacations?

Audrey: For sure. We spend so much time researching and planning for our vacations, and we have a lot of unknown factors to deal with, such as, you know, if we travel abroad, you can think about the weather, the culture, the language, the different events taking place, the transportation. So, AI can be a real game changer for that particular task of planning. And you can use tools like ChatGPT that can help with planning accordingly, personalized to your preferences or to your financial situation and your context.

Ashleay: Absolutely. Well, actually, I did use ChatGPT to help me out with a trip to Paris that we were just discussing a little bit earlier. Yeah, and I was a little bit hard on it. I asked it if it could give me, you know, main tourist attractions in Paris, because, as I said, I was with my daughter and my mom. So, we all have different interests. Main tourist attractions, separated by a comma, and I'll explain this after, with the opening hours, how much it costs, are there prices for kids, things like that. And the commas is because I put it in Excel afterwards, right? So it was very easy then to make myself a whole graph. And then I could just sort by what was interesting to me, or to my daughter, or to my mom.

Audrey: I love that.

Ashleay: Yes, it was fantastic. So, I think we really have a nice tool here. Maybe, Audrey, do you have a story about your AI use for planning a trip?

Audrey: Of course. I planned my whole vacation this year with ChatGPT.

Ashleay: Ooh.

Audrey: This year my family wanted to do a road trip to the USA for three weeks, so it's a big challenge to plan. First of all, we have an electric car that we travel with. We are a family of five and I have three kids from 8 years old to 18 years old.

Ashleay: Oh!

Audrey: With various interests.

Ashleay: Yes. And I think you have two boys and a girl, right?

Audrey: Yeah, two boys and a girl. So, it's a very complex context, and we wanted to stay around 2 or 3 days at every stop. And ChatGPT actually made the whole road trip itinerary for us, taking into consideration all the criteria I gave it. It was marvelous and it also gave us inspiration and comparison, like you say with your Excel sheet. So, you can compare everything based on your criteria. It can help also with budget planning, which I use also for that, because we have a restricted budget to travel and if we want to go, you know, three weeks, with a family of five, you have to consider places to stay, and the activities, and the food, the food is expensive.

Ashleay: Yep. Absolutely. Yeah.

Audrey: And I compared! I did the exercise and I decided to put the effort into doing the whole process myself. And I realized ChatGPT was really accurate and my plan was as good as ChatGPT’s. And it took, let's say, less than 50% of the time when I used ChatGPT. 50%, maybe 75% less time using ChatGPT. So, it’s really worth it.

Ashleay: Wow, that is really cool. And can it also help us when we're on site during a trip?

Audrey: Yes, of course, you can use it if you have planned your budget with AI, you can also manage your planned budget on site. There are a lot of apps made for that. Of course you can use ChatGPT, but there is a simpler way to use AI in an app for that. One use case I like is the real-time translation, so there is app for that. Also, ChatGPT does it so you can use it to speak to your phone, or the person you want to speak to that speaks another language. You can use it to record the voice, and you have also the voice of the AI that is talking. So, you can understand and talk in different languages.

Ashleay: Yeah, very neat.

Audrey: Yeah. And there is, we talked about AI, but there’s also technologies like AirTags.

Ashleay: Oh yes, I used that on our last trip. That was fantastic. We didn't lose our luggage.

Audrey: Yeah, but if you do.

Ashleay: If you do.

Audrey: You can track your luggage. So, put a little AirTag in every luggage and you'll be very happy.

Ashleay: Yes, exactly. Absolutely.

Audrey: And the last use case I want to talk to you about is getting details of objects, of landscapes, monuments, signs, if there are menus in restaurants, if you don't speak the language there, or if you travel and you don't know where you are or what you're looking at and it's beautiful: you can take a picture and AI can give you details like a tourist guide and inform you about that particular picture you provide it.

Ashleay: Very, very interesting. So, there are definitely a lot of benefits of technology and AI for vacations and traveling. So where do we go? What do we do to try this out? If someone is new to this whole situation.

Audrey: I don't want to give the whole list because there are a lot of apps and websites. So, you can start by doing a Google search on AI apps for travel and vacation planning. You can find a lot of good sources, and of course you can use ChatGPT and Copilot that is in Bing, and you can use it for free. And you can start by having a conversation with the tool to give you insights or some tips to plan your vacation.

Ashleay: That's fantastic. And maybe we can just cover one last thing is the importance of the human aspect, right? So, I think it's not always 100% perfect. We always have to double check with AI. Is there anything you wanted to add?

Audrey: Yeah, yeah. AI is not a travel agency. It's not a human. So always validate the information it gives you. You don't want to be in trouble when you're traveling because you were really confident about the information ChatGPT gave you. So always check your sources, but use it as an assistant. It will save you a lot of time.

Ashleay: Fantastic. So that's how today's episode ends. Many thanks, Audrey, for explaining how to use artificial intelligence when planning a vacation. And thank you also to our listeners and we'll see you all next week.

Audrey: Thank you.