I Asked AI to Plan a Vacation… and It Told Me to Call a Travel Agent

How to Craft AI Prompts That Turn You into the World’s Most Knowledgeable Travel Advisor

 

Written By: Tom Ogg, Co-Founder and Co-Owner – Travel Professional NEWS 

 

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: AI is going to reshape the travel industry. It already is. From Ray-Ban META smart glasses that narrate the world around you like an overenthusiastic tour guide, to full-blown itinerary platforms like Genspark, TriPandoo, Wanderlog, and a dozen others that seemed to launch overnight, the tools are multiplying faster than resort fees.

 

So here’s the question keeping travel agents up at night, right between worrying about airline seat assignments and that client who still faxes booking requests: If AI can do what we do, why do clients still need us?

 

The answer, it turns out, is sitting right there in your keyboard. It’s called a prompt. And the gap between a bad prompt and a great one is the difference between sending your clients to Cancun in August and sending them to the Azores before anyone else even knows the Azores exist.

 

Welcome to the art (and yes, it is an art) of travel prompting. Buckle up. We’re going somewhere the algorithm doesn’t usually go.

 

 

Why Generic Prompts Produce Generic Results

 

AI language models are trained on the entire internet, which means they’ve absorbed approximately 4.7 billion travel blog posts all saying the exact same thing about Santorini sunsets. When you ask a vague question, the model reaches for the most statistically common answer. It’s not being lazy, it’s being efficient. Unfortunately, efficiency and originality are not always on speaking terms.

 

Think of prompting like ordering at a restaurant. Walk in and say “I’ll have something good” and the server brings you the house special. It’s fine. It’s what they serve everyone who can’t be bothered to look at the menu. But walk in and say “I want something with tiger prawns, a local wine from a volcanic island, and a dessert the chef actually cares about” and suddenly you’re having an experience. Same kitchen. Completely different outcome.

 

 

The good news: AI responds remarkably well to specifics. The more deliberate and layered your prompt, the more useful, and frankly impressive, the result.

 

The Prompt Foundation: Define Your Client in Embarrassing Detail

 

Before you type a single word about a destination, describe your client. Not “couple in their 50s”, that tells the AI approximately nothing. It’s the travel equivalent of telling your doctor “I feel weird.” Instead, open with something like this:

 

“My clients are a semi-retired couple, early 60s, who have traveled extensively in Western Europe, find beach resorts exhausting, are passionate about Byzantine history, eat adventurously but require good wine, and are physically active but not mountaineers. They have a moderate-to-high budget and strongly prefer boutique properties with fewer than 30 rooms.”

 

That single paragraph just eliminated 90% of the planet and zeroed in on places like Plovdiv, Bulgaria; the Peloponnese coast; or the Cappadocian valleys of Turkey. You’ve given the AI a filter. Without a filter, AI is a fire hose. With one, it’s a scalpel.

 

The Destination Drill-Down: Going Three Layers Deep

 

Most advisors stop at the country or city level. That’s layer one. The magic happens at layer three. Here’s the technique in action:

 

Layer 1 Prompt:

“Tell me about travel in Albania.”

 

Result: Generic overview. Tirana. Berat. Budget destination. Emerging market. Fine. Forgettable. You’ve essentially asked the internet to summarize itself.

 

Layer 2 Prompt:

“What are the lesser-known coastal areas of southern Albania for travelers who want to avoid the tourist trail, are interested in Ottoman architecture, and prefer small guesthouses to hotels?”

 

Result: You’ll get Himarë, Dhermë, Gjirokastrër. Better. More useful. Your client might not be able to pronounce them, but they’ll thank you.

 

Layer 3 Prompt:

“In the Albanian Riviera region specifically, what villages within 20km of Himarë offer guesthouses run by local families, proximity to archaeological sites, access to uncrowded beaches, and what are the best months to visit for mild weather without peak-season crowds?”

 

Now you’re cooking. Now you have something your client absolutely cannot Google themselves in thirty seconds, and if they try, they’ll give up and call you instead.

 

 

The principle is simple: keep drilling. Every time the AI gives you a useful answer, use that answer to build a more specific follow-up. Treat it like a conversation with a very well-read colleague who gives great answers when you ask great questions and mediocre answers when you don’t.

 

Customization Techniques That Actually Work

 

The Constraint Stack

Add restrictions that force the AI to think creatively rather than conveniently. Try something like: “Suggest a 10-day itinerary for a solo female traveler interested in textile arts and local craftsmanship, avoiding major cities, with a budget of $150 per day including accommodation, in a country most Americans haven’t visited but with solid infrastructure and widely spoken English.”

 

Constraints are not limitations, they are GPS coordinates for the AI’s imagination. Without them, you’re just getting Barcelona again.

 

The Comparison Anchor

Travelers often articulate what they want through analogy. Lean into it. “My clients loved Luang Prabang ten years ago, the spiritual atmosphere, manageable scale, French colonial architecture layered on Southeast Asian culture, and the food scene. Where in Southeast Asia today offers a similar experience that hasn’t yet been overrun by mass tourism?”

 

The AI understands the emotional DNA of that request and matches it to emerging destinations. Spoiler: it will not say Koh Samui. Or Bali. Or anywhere that currently has a Marriott and a rooftop infinity pool.

 

The Anti-Prompt

Tell the AI what to exclude. “Suggest destinations in Central America for a photography-focused trip, specifically excluding Costa Rica, Belize, and any destination featured on the cover of a major travel magazine in the past two years.”

 

Negative space is a legitimate creative tool, in art, in architecture, and apparently in telling AI not to recommend places that already have their own Instagram filter.

 

The Persona Layer

Ask the AI to respond as a specialist. “As a cultural anthropologist with expertise in indigenous South American communities, recommend destinations in Peru beyond Cusco and Machu Picchu where travelers can engage authentically with living traditions, not folkloric performances staged for tourists, but genuine cultural exchange.”

 

Role assignment shifts the AI’s reference frame and noticeably elevates the quality and specificity of the response. It’s also deeply satisfying to instruct a language model to put on it’s PhD hat.

 

 

Extracting Practical, Bookable Intelligence

Niche destination research is only useful if it translates into actual bookings. Once you’ve pinpointed the destination, shift your prompts toward logistics:

 

“For the village of [X], identify: the best three-month travel window, typical accommodation options and price range, transportation from the nearest international hub, any entry or permit requirements, and which local guides or operators are most frequently cited by independent travelers.”

 

That single prompt can save hours of research and produce a client-ready destination brief that makes you look like you’ve personally scouted the place, which, in a way, you have.

 

You can also prompt for the problems: “What are the most common complaints travelers have about visiting [destination], and how are those typically mitigated?” This question alone will make you look like a seasoned expert, because you’ll have pre-answered the objections before your client even raises them. That, colleagues, is the definition of professional.

 

AI Isn’t the Competition, It’s the World’s Most Patient Travel Research Assistant

Here is the great irony that the doom-scrollers miss: the better AI gets, the more valuable great travel agents become. Why? Because the gap between a mediocre AI user and a masterful one grows wider every day, and travel agents who invest in their prompting skills are building a professional asset that compounds over time.

 

Think of it this way: a hammer doesn’t replace a carpenter. It just makes a bad carpenter slightly less slow and a great carpenter extraordinarily efficient. AI is the most powerful hammer the travel industry has ever seen. The question is who’s swinging it.

 

Prompts are not search queries. They are conversations. The agents who get the most out of AI treat the interaction as iterative, they read the response, identify what’s missing, and ask a sharper follow-up question. They also save their best prompt structures as templates, which we strongly encourage. A well-built prompt framework is a professional asset worth protecting right alongside your GDS credentials and your file of reliable villa contacts in Umbria, Italy.

 

The travel advisors who thrive in the coming decade are not necessarily the ones who know the most destinations by heart, that race was largely lost to TripAdvisor around 2003. They are the ones who ask the best questions: of their clients, of their suppliers, and yes, of their AI tools.

 

Specificity is your competitive advantage. Curiosity is your business model. And the Azores are waiting.