AI & tools
How do you use ChatGPT to plan a trip?
Ask for a day-by-day itinerary with named venues, your trip length, and your pace, then verify each place and put the list on a map. The output is text, so the step people skip is converting it into something with addresses they can navigate to and share. Check hours, closures, and travel times before booking anything.
Prompt with constraints rather than a destination alone. Trip length, who's coming, how much walking you want, one or two things you already know you want to do, and the season all change the answer materially. A request for "5 days in Lisbon, two of us, slow mornings, one day trip, no museums before 11" produces something usable; "plan Lisbon" produces a generic list.
Ask for venue names and neighborhoods explicitly. Without that you get categories — "a traditional fado restaurant" — which pushes the actual research back onto you.
Then get it off the page. A text itinerary can't tell you that two of its Tuesday stops are forty minutes apart, and it can't be shared with a group in a form that stays current. Pasting the list into a mapping tool surfaces the geography problems and gives you something you can hand to whoever you're traveling with.
Step by step
- 1
Give it the constraints
Length, group, pace, season, and any fixed plans. Vague prompts return generic itineraries.
- 2
Ask for named places
Specific venues and neighborhoods, so the result is checkable.
- 3
Verify the bookable parts
Opening days, timed tickets, and whether each place still exists.
- 4
Map the list
Paste it into a planner that geocodes each place, then look at the gaps between stops.
Do it in Arriv
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