From TikTok To Travel: Explore The World With An AI Travel Assistant

Welcome to this week’s Deep-fried Dive with Fry Guy! In these long-form articles, Fry Guy conducts an in-depth analysis of a cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) development or developer. Today, Fry Guy is exploring Let’sTrip AI, an AI tool that uses TikTok data to create personalized travel itineraries. We hope you enjoy!

*Notice: We do not gain any monetary compensation from the people and projects we feature in the Sunday Deep-fried Dives with Fry Guy. We explore these projects and developers solely for the purpose of revealing to you interesting and cutting-edge AI projects, developers, and uses.*

Whether you’re looking to explore a new city for a weekend or kick back at the beach for three weeks, one of the most difficult parts of the travel experience is finding the best spots to explore. Rather than doing a bunch of internet searches and wasting your vacation driving around, what if there was a solution that could give you a detailed itinerary for any trip?

Let’sTrip is an AI-driven platform which can plan an entire trip based on a simple prompt.

HAVE AI PLAN YOUR TRIP

Alon Zilberman, originally from Israel, has always had a passion for traveling. So when ChatGPT came out in late 2022, one of his first ideas was to ask it to help him plan different trips. Although it worked quite nicely, “it was really missing the visual component.” In his free time, Zilberman has always enjoyed exploring travel videos. He describes, “When you open social media, such as TikTok, you often see a lot of really cool travel videos.” He began to wonder if there was a way to combine AI with the power of social media to create a visual, personalized travel experience. This is how Let’sTrip was born.

Let’sTrip begins with a simple user prompt. For example, users can type, “2 day trip to Seattle with my husband, want to visit places for cool instagram photos,” or “a weekend trip to Knoxville, Tennessee with my best friend.” From here, AI does the planning magic. After a few seconds, users are presented with an entire itinerary, detailed for each day. The itinerary is outlined in plain language, with activities and experiences tailored to the number of people and interests included in your prompt. For example, if you are seeking a romantic getaway, the AI might recommend a walk on the beach or a couple’s massage. If it’s a weekend with an active friend, the AI might recommend a hike through the mountains or a day on the lake. These recommendations are tailored to optimize the best the area has to offer, for any occasion. The itinerary also includes an interactive map, so you don’t need an independent search to figure out where these places are. Not to mention, the AI will search for local events that are taking place during your stay and offer you tailored suggestions for shows, concerts, and sporting events. And when the fun is winding down and you are looking for some good eats and a place to stay, Let’sTrip offers “Tasty Picks” and “Stay Recommendations” to help you have the best stay possible.

At first blush, some might suspect that the AI is using Google reviews or guesswork to generate these itineraries; but the AI actually uses TikTok! The more popular videos that are on TikTok about a specific location, attraction, or restaurant, the more apt the AI is to recommend it. If you reflect on this, it makes a lot of sense. When people have a great experience, they often don’t leave a Google review or take some survey; rather, they post on social media about it for all their friends to see. So by pulling data from TikTok, Let’sTrip can provide recommendations that accurately reflect public opinion and that stay current. Beyond using TikTok to personalize the itinerary, Let’sTrip provides links to many of the TikTok videos which display the recommended activities or locations. This way, users can see a short, fun travel video about the recommended places to help them decide if that’s something they want to do or not. Not to mention, the videos can help users get excited about their trip!

The fun doesn’t stop with the itinerary. No good trip comes without some travel tunes! The Let’sTrip AI uses a Spotify integration to create playlists that fit the user’s journey. If it’s a trip to Tennessee, users might get songs such as “Rocky Top” and “Wagon Wheel,” but if it’s a romantic getaway to New York City, users can expect to hear Alicia Keys and maybe some Chris Brown. This feature was inspired by Zilberman’s wife when they were taking a trip to West Virginia. He told FryAI, “On our trip to West Virginia, my wife knew there were a lot of cool songs about the state, so she made a Spotify playlist manually before the trip. I thought to myself: it would be really cool if you could just get this playlist automatically.” So because of Let’sTrip, you can not only explore your AI-generated itinerary, but you can enjoy your AI-generated playlist along the way.

Even if you are the indecisive type, Let’sTrip has you covered. For those that want to travel but are not sure where, Let’sTrip offers AI trip recommendations, equipped with fully pre-designed AI-generated itineraries. These can be searched for and filtered by destination, trip length, location, trip type, and more. In this way, your next great trip is literally only one click away.

THE FUTURE OF TRAVEL

Many travel companies have been trying to include AI into their user interfaces in hopes of creating a more seamless travel planning experience. This has become prominent in customer service helplines with major airlines and resorts, for example. Expedia, the one-stop-shop for all things travel, has included a ChatGPT-driven chatbot as well, which is supposed to offer assistance to customers based on their travel needs. However, there has been nothing as helpful and personalized for actually recommending and creating itineraries like Let’sTrip.

The current services are just the start for Let’sTrip. Zilberman has hinted at including Instagram integrations to get a wider variety of recommendation data. He is also working on ways for users to make simple choices based on transportation methods and budget, which will allow users to get recommendations that meet their financial ranges. This will potentially come along with an enhanced user interface which allows users to book hotels and flights straight from the Let’sTrip platform.

Some might worry that as AI takes over the travel planning industry, human jobs will be displaced. Zilberman doesn’t view this as much of a concern. AI has the potential to revolutionize our lives in ways we can't even imagine. It is a rapidly evolving field that continues to push boundaries and challenge the status quo. Zilberman believes AI will continue to shift the travel industry (and others) in ways that will create unforeseeable new opportunities. As Zilberman remarks, “It’s not the first time in human history when something new replaced humans in certain niches.” We might liken the development of AI in this respect to the creation of the car. This surely eliminated the need for horse and carriage builders, but it opened the door for many more jobs in the automotive industry. Something similar might be the case in travel-related industries with regards to AI. Not to mention, those who seek out human travel agents often do so for the human touch, which will never go away.

YOUR NEXT TRIP, POWERED BY AI

Next time you are gearing up for a weekend roadtrip or a two-week vacation to the beach, it’s worth checking out what Let’sTrip has to offer. You might just find yourself jumping on the AI train, riding off into the sunset … quite literally.

WANT TO SEE THE FULL INTERVIEW?

Our FryAI team sat down with Alon Zilberman, creator of Let’sTrip AI, to discuss his project and the future of AI in travel. Check out the full interview below: