ChatGPT is my new Travel Agent

I am planning a trip to a new location I don’t know much about. This is the sweet spot for a traditional travel advisor. Instead, I turned to ChatGPT.

We’re planning a trip to Costa Rica and I need to book flights. Having worked in the travel industry before, I’m very picky about both how I book (I never book on an online travel agent like Expedia - ask me why) and what I book (I avoid stops whenever possible).

I asked ChatGPT to look up flights for me:

ChatGPT responded with:

(I ❤️ that it talked to Kayak.com. It’s one of my first steps I take when looking at flights.)

🪄 🪄 The next thing was magical.

It recognized that the return flights didn’t get in before my desired time AND offered to look for other options:

It found a bunch of flights leaving earlier from Liberia, going to Houston. And then we ended up booking a flight from Houston to NYC:

I could definitely have achieved the same using kayak.com instead of going through ChatGPT and having them talk to Kayak, but I found the experience more personal and pleasant being able to type or voice-to-text into ChatGPT than dealing with filters and buttons on Kayak.