you’re planning a holiday and you end up opening ten tabs in your browser. You message your friends for hotel recommendations and spend hours Googling flight prices. If you’re a young Indian traveller, that might be starting to sound outdated.
AI chatbots are quickly becoming the friends who help you plan your trips, from picking your dream destination to crafting your day-by-day itinerary.
This isn’t speculation. The 2026 Travel Outlook from booking site Agoda revealed that 33% of Indian travellers were already using AI to help plan vacations; 68% said they would consider using it for their next trip.
What Can AI Do To Plan Your Trip?
You can ask a lot of questions.
Provide your budget, travel dates, interests, and preferred activity level to an AI tool and it will recommend places to visit and help plot your itinerary. Dreaming of a three-day getaway to Goa for under ₹20,000? Tell the AI tool you like cafés and beaches more than overcrowded monuments. Traveling with your parents? Add that you’d like to avoid long walks. The destinations and activities it suggests will look different based on these preferences.
Google has also started integrating AI travel capabilities into its products. Google’s new AI chatbot Gemini can pull information from Google Flights and Google Hotels to help you search for tickets and accommodation. Its other new AI tools, currently in their testing phase in India, can pull information from Gmail, Photos, YouTube, and Google Search—which will allow for highly personalised travel planning should you opt to connect these accounts to the assistant.
Gen Z Travel is About More Than Itineraries
So far, AI chatbots seem to be most useful for helping Gen Z Indians plan, edit, and troubleshoot day-to-day itineraries. But there’s potential for a lot more than that.
Before Your Trip:
Research destinations, compare costs, check weather forecasts, create packing lists.
During Your Trip:
Search for restaurants, translate common phrases, discover activities, plan routes.
After Your Trip:
Sort through photos, generate captions, edit your travels into a story.
A survey conducted by Booking.com found that travellers around the world were already using AI to research vacation destinations, find unique local experiences, and get restaurant recommendations. There’s potential for plenty more.
But Is It Okay To Trust Everything AI Tells You?
Nope.
AI chatbots will sometimes recommend a restaurant that has since closed down, a must-see attraction with outdated hours, or a “short-cut” that makes sense when you’re reading about it but isn’t quite realistic on the ground. Double check current information—especially when it comes to flight dates and prices, hotel room rates, entry fees, weather alerts, and local restrictions—before booking anything.
And here’s something else to keep in mind: AI-generated itineraries can be intense. Trying to hit six different spots in the same city over lunch might seem efficient, but that’s not a vacation – that’s you rushing between activities. Just because an AI assistant can pack your trip full of activities doesn’t mean you should let it.
How To Have Smarter Travels With AI
Think of your AI chatbot as your personal travel secretary.
Ask it to brainstorm three potential itineraries rather than relying on the first one it suggests. Tell it what you’re not interested in. Ask it which attractions are close enough to one another that you can visit them all in a single afternoon. Then go verify that the open hours and flight times will work with your schedule.
AI can help Indian millennials and Gen Z travellers cut down on research time, which means more time can be spent deciding what you actually want from your next holiday.
