I Tested 8 AI Trip Planners So You Don't Have To

Over the past week, I tested eight AI trip planning tools using the same travel prompt. Here's what I learned.

Planning a holiday used to mean juggling dozens of browser tabs—flights, hotels, YouTube videos, Reddit recommendations, Google Maps, and travel blogs. AI trip planners promise to simplify that process, but after testing several popular options, I found that they vary much more than their marketing suggests.

My Testing Methodology

To make the comparison fair, I gave every planner the same prompt:

Create a 9-day Japan itinerary for October.

Budget: £2,000

Interests:
- Food
- Photography
- Hiking
- Anime

Constraints:
- No more than one museum

I evaluated each tool on:

• Itinerary quality
• Personalisation
• Ease of editing
• Booking support
• User experience
• Overall usefulness

These are the same criteria I found most important when comparing the tools.

What Surprised Me

1. Good UI ≠ Good Itinerary

Several tools looked polished but generated impractical schedules.

Examples included attractions that were far apart or recommendations that would be difficult to fit into a single day.

1. Prompt Quality Matters More Than the AI

The biggest improvement didn't come from switching tools.

It came from improving the prompt.

Instead of:

Plan my Japan trip

I used:

Create a 9-day Japan itinerary for October with a £2,000 budget.

I love food, photography, hiking and anime.

Avoid tourist traps.

Maximum one museum.

The results were dramatically better. This matched one of the biggest takeaways from my testing: detailed prompts consistently produced more useful itineraries.

What Each Tool Did Best

This mirrors the strengths I observed while testing each planner.

The Biggest Limitation of AI Travel Planning

Every planner occasionally produced inaccurate or outdated information.

Regardless of which tool you use, always verify:

• Flight schedules
• Hotel availability
• Opening hours
• Public transport
• Visa requirements

AI is an excellent planning assistant, but it shouldn't be your only source for travel logistics.

My Biggest Takeaway

After testing all eight tools, I realised something interesting:

The best AI doesn't necessarily create the "perfect" itinerary.

It removes the hardest part of travel planning—starting from a blank page.

Once you have a reasonable draft, refining it becomes much easier. That was the biggest benefit I found across all the planners I tried.

If you're curious, I published the complete comparison—including detailed reviews, screenshots, and scoring—for all eight tools on the SearchSpot blog: