How it works 3 min read
AI trip planner or a chatbot.
A chatbot can write a five day itinerary in seconds. The work starts after that: checking that the places exist, that they are open and that the day fits. Here is what a trip planner does about it, and where it stops.
The short version.
- A chatbot mostly answers with text. A trip planner has to answer with a schedule.
- In Plan4Me a language model picks the places from a list of real ones. Code sets the order, the start times and the travel legs.
- The published plans show the limits too: 34 of the 222 stops carry a published price.
9
published 5 day plans
222
stops, each with a start time
50 h 25 min
of travel legs
34
stops with a published price
What a chatbot gives you.
Ask a general AI chatbot for five days in Tokyo and you get a good first draft. It is fast, and it is strong on ideas.
The draft is text. Checking it is your job, unless the assistant has tools for it:
- Is every place real, and is it where the text says it is?
- Is it open on the day and at the hour the draft puts you there?
- How long does it take to get from one stop to the next?
- Does the day fit your pace, or is it nine stops long?
What an AI trip planner adds.
Plan4Me splits the work. A language model does the part it is good at. Code does the part that is arithmetic.
The full pipeline is in How Plan4Me builds an itinerary.
After the plan exists.
A chat reply is usually where it ends. A plan in an app is something you keep working with.
- Swap one stop from a short note. The rest of the day stays as it is.
- Move a stop up or down, or delete it. An undo step reverses a delete.
- See each day as a route on a map.
- On the trip, the Today view marks the current stop and the next one, and opens directions to both.
What the plans do not know.
We publish nine plans in full, so the gaps are public too.
- Only 35 of the 222 stops carry published opening hours. The check runs only where the hours are known, so check the hours of each place before you go.
- Only 34 of the 222 stops carry a published price. The pages print no figure for the rest.
- A distance on a plan page is a straight line between two stops. It is not a route.
- A travel leg is the travel time the plan allows between two stops of one day. It does not cover the trip from where you sleep.
A plan is a starting point you can check. That is the reason every stop carries a start time, a length and a place on the map.
Which one to use.
Use a chatbot to decide where to go and what kind of trip you want. Use a trip planner when you need the days to work: real places, in a set order, with a start time for each.
Read one to judge for yourself. The Tokyo plan lists every stop and every start time.
See the output.
The five day Tokyo plan.
23 stops across five days, with a start time for every stop. Free to read.
Read the Tokyo plan
