For those of you who know, our two oldest children went about as far away from Texas, to college as they could possibly get and still be in the contiguous United States. Our daughter was recruited to play soccer for an engineering school in Maine and loved it so much that she convinced her brother to attend the same school. This summer both of our older kids are in the State of Texas for one reason or another. Reach out if you want to hear the full story. She wanted to have her car with her while in Texas, which means that I traveled to Maine to pick them up.
Our original trip was going to just be she and I, but life happened and the boy came along as well. To help us plan our road trip home, since it takes a few days and we were going to leisurely make our way back to Texas, I thought it would be entertaining to see how AI could plan our trip.
If you have never used AI to plan a trip before, I highly recommend checking it out, and seeing what comes up. Of course, do not take AI as gospel, verify the information and make sure it actually fits what it says and what you are looking for. When you ask your AI of choice your question, be as specific as you can. Give it lots of parameters to consider, and off it will go, scouring the internet way faster than you and Google could ever do in the past.
I will say when we used this tool, I tried multiple different AI options to plan our travel. Claude, Copilot, Chat GPT, and Gemini to name a few. Each one gave me different information, and a different route to take based on how I asked it to go. We usually like to leave out Tennessee, but since she wanted to visit her cousin, we ended up driving across the entire state. But in our original query we had a route that would divert us away from Tennessee for the most part due to time constraints.
The best thing I liked about using AI was the data it pulled for places to stay. I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone that we selected to stay at Bed and Breakfast locations along our route. For each stop we requested, it pulled at least three options to select from. After verifying the distance from point A to point B we made our choice and hoped it was going to be great.
When I stay at a bed and breakfast I want to have the full experience, similar to what we give our guests. A full breakfast, a beautifully appointed room, and that at home feeling, when you travel to help keep guests comfortable and willing to return. I made sure to request locations that offered breakfast, with their stay. I will say that a few of the choices AI gave us did not have a breakfast option or they charged extra for the breakfast meal. I don’t know about you, but I like to see that cost included in my stay not an additional add on. For whatever reason, I feel that breakfast is integral to a person’s stay at a bed and breakfast. At The Oaks Bed and Breakfast, breakfast is always included in the price of your stay.
Needless to say, that is not always the case when using AI to help plan your travel. I strongly recommend always checking the results of your AI query, and call to verify details before booking. The other obstacle we ran into was the distance, that AI thought we were traveling. The first day, we wanted to drive for about 3 hours. In the first set of options, AI had us traveling only about 1.5 hours. With better questions and a little more searching we finally landed in the correct location, and for a 30 hour drive, those first 3 hours made the difference when driving back to Texas.
The moral of the story is that if you are using AI to plan your travel, yes absolutely do so, but be sure to check your results. Call and ask questions of the establishments where you plan to stay, unless of course you are going with corporate lodging, they will always be the same. If that is how you want to travel, go for it. For those of you who want to experience travel, then staying at a boutique inn or bed and breakfast is the better way to go. Check the mileage on a map before booking to make sure you are getting the most out of your travel days that you need or want to make.
Most important is to enjoy the experience. Hit the road with an end in mind or just hit the road to see what you can see. AI can be most helpful right now with gas prices so high to help you plan travel around a single tank of gas. Explore your “backyard” to discover something new, and experience your State, close by. You never know what new adventure awaits.
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