Can you book flights and hotels using AI?
The short answer is… kind of, but none of the AI chatbots are reliable, so you’ll still need to do your own research at this stage.
Having recently spent hours researching flights and accommodation for a three-week trip to Japan, I decided to compare my results to Bard and ChatGPT’s suggestions.
It turns out that Bard is actually surprisingly good at finding flights. A simple request for flights from Melbourne and Tokyo on a particular day returned options with major carriers like Qantas and Japan Airlines, which is probably what many people would be after.
Bard was then able to further refine the results to “cheapest direct flight, with seat selection, a minimum 15 kilograms of luggage and a meal,” finding an Air Asia flight from Melbourne to Osaka that was cheaper than the one I’d booked to Tokyo.
The AI was also pretty good at determining the seat width, pitch and recline angle for the Air Asia flight to work out if actually flying with the airline was going to be a nightmare.
Overall pretty impressive, though it’s unable to provide a link to book that particular flight. I checked, however, and the prices and details on the site matched.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, ChatGPT was a total fail, despite its new Kayak travel agent plugin. It offered me a 29-hour flight via Atlanta and Detroit, which is about three times as long as a direct flight would take. And while there are plenty of direct flights available, it insisted there were none. As it’s a U.S.-focused site, your mileage may vary.
In terms of hotels, the Kayak plugin won but only by default. Prompted to find an affordable double room in Shibuya with a review score above 7, it suggested the Shinagawa Prince Hotel for $155 a night and provided a direct link to book it. It turned out the hotel was an hour’s walk from Shibuya, and none of the other options were located in Shibuya either.
This was still an order of magnitude better than Bard, which suggested the Hotel Gracery Shibuya at $120 a night. The only problem is that no such hotel exists.
It then offered the Shibuya Excel Hotel at $100 per night, but the actual cost was $220 a night when I tried to book. After I pointed this out, Bard apologized profusely and again…
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