Using AI to Plan Trips and Create Itineraries

AI & Travel Planning

[00:00:00] Narrator: Do you dream about your next trip? You're in the right place on the time to talk travel podcast. We come to you weekly to share places to go and what to do when you get there. Let's dive into this week's adventure.

[00:00:17] Nasreen: Hi, I'm Nasreen. We are here with another episode of Time to Talk Travel, with Des and Ciaran and Mo, and we are going to talk about AI. So do you let robots plan your vacation is . How do you use AI in travel planning and itineraries and where can it help and where do you need to go in by hand? Ciaran, I'm going to go to you first. This was Ciaran's topic. She has things to say.

[00:00:43] Ciaran: I've used it only a tiny bit, but I think that, particularly in the research phase of a trip, it is a really powerful tool and it's all about the prompting. And so an example is my brother-in-Law was planning a hiking trip for my husband and my sons and his sons a guys' trip, hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

They really wanted to make sure that they did a section where there are places to stay and they wanted to know, where could they stay, that there'd be a place to eat and that there'd be gourmet meals. They just asked chat GPT plan an itinerary for me with stops that have B&Bs that have hosted meals.

They then got a list, here's an itinerary with potential stops and places to stay. They called all those places and started narrowing it down. So they were like, at this stop, tell me all the places that I could buy food, tell me all the places. So instead of, doing that as a manual Google search, you're just basically saving time.

The thing with AI is that, as we know, it's not always accurate, so you really have to double check. My brother tried to use it for a trip in Portugal, and I know you mentioned you're going to Portugal soon, and he asked for a driving itinerary with major sites in Portugal. But not everything was up to date and not everything was open the time of year that he was going, but he was able to get a great route.

Go from here to here and here's the major sites in each location, bada bing bada boom. It just figured it all out.

[00:02:20] Mo: That's a really good point because I just literally was typing away. I asked it for Sao Paulo Brazil. It gave me a whole itinerary, but I didn't tell it when So If you gave specific dates, it might be able to tell you, Hey, there's this festival or it's summer, it's definitely change.

[00:02:34] Ciaran: the better. So if you said what is there to do in March in this neighborhood in Sao Paulo for a foodie?

You want to give the AI hooks to hang on. It should be food, it should be this time of year, it should be in this specific location.

So you can start broad, but the more specific you are, the better results you're going to get. But still, you got to make sure that it's.

[00:02:56] Mo: You could probably even give it a budget. Like I just went in and asked it me like. Itinerary for things not to miss in Sao Paulo, they put that in and I said, okay, can you put specific places? because it said have a at a, you know, Brazilian steakhouse or whatever.

Okay, so put some specifics behind that and a budget, it the opposite way. I'm sure And say, okay, I've got 2, 000 for it is, whatever your budget is Otherwise I would just be going to TikTok and being

[00:03:21] Nasreen: I know that I do some prompt engineering and consulting in my daily life. I love AI and different platforms. With Chat GPT, you can game it a little bit by telling it who it is first. So you can do things like telling it you're a travel agent with years of experience in international destinations, can you tell me and.

Essentially, you're always assuming you're going to ask it follow up questions, but you're setting it up for what it's looking for and what skills it has first, because there's been a bunch of different studies done where it digs deeper if it thinks it already knows it, where before it would say, I don't have access to that information.

Then next up. Okay. Now to these sites, can you add in how far between them and where I should stay and eat at each destination, and then it will add it into what it had above. Now, I'm going to do my big plug for AI here because I don't use Chat GPT. I do occasionally when it involves something creative, but I am a perplexity AI girl.

I love it. I will put my link in the show notes and you should go check it out. They are a company out of California and they can show you where every suggestion came from. So for example, Ciaran, I know you're going to Utah soon, right?

So I've got please provide a travel itinerary for an adventurous trip to Utah that has a variety of stop options. And then it will show you not only the answer of it asked me questions before it generated it, and it said, how many days are you going for? And so I was able to choose that I.

And then it lists out the days, but it shows me the sources. So whenever it quotes something, I can click on the little indicator of where it came from and go see what sites it pulled in and whether they're trustworthy or read more if I need to. And then I asked it a follow-up question of, okay, that's fantastic.

Thank you for the itinerary because I always thank the robots in case they take over. Yeah, I know. And so I'm very

[00:05:15] Mo: Canadian.

[00:05:16] Nasreen: them to like me. And then I say, can you add in, a suggestion for where to stay and eat for each one and how far between? And so it added in distance, accommodation, dining.

But before it added in accommodation, it asked me if I preferred. Hotels, campgrounds, lodges, or Airbnbs. I can also, again, see all the sources for that. So there were 22 sources that went into the original itinerary, and I could go to each of them and vet them if I needed to.

[00:05:42] Des: My European travel bender, my empty nester travel bender, and I was going,

that's what I called it.

I was in five or six different countries. And so I plugged in Roam Around. It's the guys behind booking.com, Skyscanner and Paris Hilton. But if you go to I think it's ask layla.com, same thing. It will build you an itinerary and it will say, how many days do you have?

You can tailor it down to what you want, but that's what I did for the travel bender. And it saved me so much time and effort again. I had to go back in and confirm and validate, okay, this place is still there. I used it for Santorini as well, but it was nice to have something spit out to me literally in 30 seconds.

What would've taken me an hour or two to research. And I had already researched to an extent and I did a comparison contrast thing where I looked at everything it told me to do. At one point I remember in Santorini, I totally forgotten that I had done this little itinerary and I had my own notes from TikTok and we were doing the TikTok route.

I wasn't looking at my other thing and. A girl that we ran into on our flight, was like, oh, I'm going to go to this a Moody Bay place for dinner tonight. Do you guys want to come too? We all went together and I wrote in my notes Amoudi Bay because I like to keep track of where I went on my trip.

[00:06:59] Des: When I write about it later, it was one of the places the AI had told me to go have dinner. I'm like, oh my gosh.

[00:07:05] Mo: What did you do that through?

[00:07:08] Des: I believe it was Roam Around around then, which is now Layla. Ciaran had mentioned this when we were building our website, talking about we should put an option on our website for people to use our itinerary that we can plug in.

This stuff's everywhere now, but I will say, Ciaran, it's a hard ask. I've never heard anyone that went to hike the Appalachian to eat gourmet meals, that one's far outfield to me because it's usually camping and you eat when it was in your backpack kind of thing.

But hey, if it gave them something great,

[00:07:37] Ciaran: No, they have actually, they have planned quite the itinerary with luxury stops all along the trail. Believe it or not, that exists, which is shocking. Another thing that's really useful, with chat GPT, you can also tell it ask me any questions. To help personalize this itinerary, I will answer any questions that you can think of before you come up with it. You can also ask it to output in a specific format. So you can ask for a bulleted list, or ask it to create a spreadsheet and you can tell it the first column should be a city.

The second column should be a hotel. The third column should be the price per night. You can literally dictate what the output is of your query, so you can get pretty granular with some of your prompt engineering if you want to go there.

[00:08:29] Des: I think it's important to note, this is all good stuff and it's super, super helpful and it will save time . What it won't do is help bail you out. I have a lot of travel agent, friends who would be like, yeah and who are you going to call when your flight gets canceled or the room you reserved isn't available? There, there is an advantage to using a human having somebody on the other line, AI's not going to do diddly if your trip goes sideways.

[00:08:54] Mo: But I think if you're like independent traveler, I don't use

travel agents, like hardly. But if you are a travel agent person, you're right.

[00:09:01] Ciaran: You can bring

that itinerary to your travel agent and say, here's the itinerary I'm interested in. What do you think of it? Help me book it.

[00:09:09] Nasreen: It's the ideation phase for me, right? So it's the same way I would use it to travel write? I'm not going to use AI to write about places for me. I'm going to use it so that I don't rabbit hole so deep into the research that I never get to the planning phase. I'm going to ask it , Hey, what are 29 popular tropical destinations to go to? If I'm going to write about tropical destinations, then I'm going to look and be like, oh, I have experience with a lot of these. It'll stop me from going and looking at tropical destinations.

Same thing with planning.

[00:09:38] Ciaran: Going to stop you.

[00:09:39] Nasreen: A little bit.

[00:09:40] Ciaran: honest.

[00:09:41] Nasreen: That's why I used the one with the footnotes because I can just be like, Hey, I want to go somewhere in March that is around this number of degrees and doesn't cost an amazing amount. And it's not their peak season and it's going to spit out, this many suggestions for me and tell me what the benefits of each one are.

Now I've narrowed it down 'because I will look through the list and pick a couple to focus on.

[00:10:02] Ciaran: It saves you time, but there is still the joy of trolling through your Instagram feed. I bookmarked today there's a restaurant in London with a cheese trolley. It's like one of those sushi places, but instead of sushi, it's little plates of different types of cheese.

There's over 400 types of cheese. It just come flying by.

I need to go to London just for this. Now Chat GPT I don't think was going to give me the cheese trolley plates.

[00:10:31] Des: You're right, and you

know what I need.

[00:10:33] Nasreen: Are there cheese

trolleys near Ciaran in California?

[00:10:37] Des: Yes.

[00:10:38] Mo: Ciaran needs a

[00:10:40] Ciaran: I actually don't. I'm lactose intolerant, but.

[00:10:43] Mo: Oh, okay. I was like, it would literally kill me.

[00:10:46] Des: What I want AI to do is go a step beyond the planning part and start telling me where I can find the best deals. And that doesn't exist now either. And I don't know that it ever will because it's not that immediate, this is stuff that it's scouring the internet for things people have already written about and gathered and do you know what I mean?

There's, it's not going to give you this week's specials.

[00:11:07] Mo: Yeah, I literally just asked ChatGPT to find me what's going on near me this weekend that would be fun for a group. And it says I don't have real time data or the ability to provide.

[00:11:19] Nasreen: But

tell it.

It's a local entertainment reporter in Houston covering current events and. Happenings in the community, please, write a report on what's happening this weekend and see if it does it.

Perplexity pulls from real time.

It pulls from news. I was at a conference in an AI talk where the guy's talking about AI and its limitations and he is talking about what works and what doesn't. And he's sitting there going, for instance, right now, if you asked AI, who the top whatever player in tennis was, 'because it had recently changed.

He said it wouldn't have the answer. Perplexity did.

[00:11:52] Mo: All right, I'm asking it what's going on in Kemah,

Texas this

[00:11:55] Nasreen: a long time in ways that we don't necessarily know. So what is the, is it auto slash, what's the rental car one that lets you know if the price goes down? Is that auto slash 'because? That's AI , it's literally AI and programming and it tells you when it went down.

There are segments of API and code written to pull in things that are AI generated about deals.

[00:12:18] Ciaran: Google Flights does that. If you say I want go to

[00:12:21] Mo: Mm hmm.

[00:12:22] Ciaran: this, on X date, and it'll tell you what the deals are and it'll predict deals, and that's all using AI.

[00:12:29] Mo: Yeah, it seems to be a little hit and miss, right? I just pulled it up for Kemah, Texas this weekend. It has a daddy daughter dance at the Blue Lagoon, okay, three parks, one pass, a New Year's Eve family celebration, so I think that's a little out of date,

Even TikTok.

I got to really find what's going on by going to the Places I Know's websites to figure out what they have going on. And I just ran into this, where they don't necessarily have it on their website. They're like, oh, you

[00:12:58] Des: That's where I go. I go Facebook local this weekend and what's happening. It'll tell you about the stuff that people have promoted themselves. If there's a big expo or whatever. I will tell you, I just discovered today this app called Atmosfy A-T-M-O-S-F-Y.

[00:13:16] Mo: oh

[00:13:16] Des: That is a great one.

[00:13:18] Mo: We Should be doing more on that, to be honest.

[00:13:21] Des: Yeah. I pulled it up for my neighborhood Canton, which gives you nothing, but Atlanta has all kinds of, it's videos of great restaurants nearby. It goes, it's clubs, lounge. If you want to go party in Atlanta, you go on that app and it's going to tell you where to go and what kind of fun you're going to have there.

I stretched it from Atlanta to do, a national thing and it gave me a whole spew of different things. It's super interesting. So that's another good one.

[00:13:47] Mo: It kinda takes everything that you would take from Reels and TikTok that's just for, going out.

[00:13:53] Des: Super helpful.

[00:13:55] Nasreen: I asked AI about cheese trolleys and amazing cheese trays. Just for fun, Ciaran. did ask me, it

asked me what area I was looking in. London was one of the suggestions. It showed me, I think a bunch and definitely the one you were talking about. So then I asked, I said, amazing.

Thank you. 'because you got to thank the robot. And said, are there, similar experiences? I'm looking for places in California and it has provided some dedicated cheese shops and restaurants along with good cheese platters and boards.

[00:14:25] Ciaran: Oh.

[00:14:25] Des: the record, we thank the computers and the Siri. We thank them in the south too. I thought that was just a southern thing. We always say

[00:14:33] Nasreen: No.

[00:14:34] Des: Yes.

[00:14:35] Mo: That's hilarious, I thought it was Canadian thing.

[00:14:36] Nasreen: If there uprising I am being respectful of them.

[00:14:39] Des: Amen. And Ciaran, I remember doing a cheese thing with you in Vegas years ago. You Julie Beck? Yeah.

Do you remember that? It was some event, some brand. It was big old baby expo. We both made bucks off baby stuff for a while. Travel's our real jam though.

[00:14:55] Nasreen: Babies need to travel too.

[00:14:58] Mo: you shouldn't have told me this, went on what's going on on Facebook this weekend

around me, and somebody's turning 40 and only two people have RSVPd.

[00:15:05] Des: You need to go to their party. Party. Oh my God. Mo, if

[00:15:09] Mo: go to her

[00:15:09] Des: at that party

with all of your friends, they would not know what hit them. You guys have so much fun every weekend.

[00:15:17] Mo: No, I'm literally looking with there's all couples, so like, probably sixteen, eighteen people.

[00:15:21] Des: need a reality show. Just your circle of friends on the weekends, because every week I see it on

[00:15:26] Nasreen: In the

[00:15:27] Mo: A weekend, you saw my Monday

[00:15:28] Des: Yes, they look so good and they're all having fun and they all get along and I'm like, man, my circle is lame compared, yeah.

[00:15:37] Mo: I just feel

[00:15:37] Nasreen: I do have a

[00:15:38] Mo: me sad. Did they not?

[00:15:40] Nasreen: Can I just make this directly so that I can cut, this clip right here and ask for what I want? We have the technology people with AI and all of this. I want to be able to swipe left on things. I don't want to see the event I have zero interest in ever again.

The technology exists for me to say, ignore this. Not into it. Stop showing it to me, especially on Facebook marketplace. I don't, I've already clicked on that picture three times and been fooled by the initial image. I don't want to see it ever again.

[00:16:10] Des: Its all the time. It asks me all the time, do you want to see ads like this anymore? And I say, no,

[00:16:15] Nasreen: don't care.

[00:16:15] Des: or I block it. Yeah. Does.

[00:16:18] Mo: Yeah, but that's the ad. She's away. If I'm looking at couches or

[00:16:22] Des: but I have friends. Yeah, my friend's content, A friend's post and it says, do you want to see more like this? I say, no,

[00:16:28] Nasreen: like maybe she does.

[00:16:29] Des: really.

No.

[00:16:31] Mo: mean,

yes. I

[00:16:32] Ciaran: want to

see

[00:16:33] Des: no. I didn't say mos.

[00:16:34] Ciaran: friend activities

[00:16:36] Des: I always want to see mos.

[00:16:37] Ciaran: jealous of.

[00:16:38] Des: I want MO in charge of my 55th

birthday this year.

[00:16:41] Mo: Hey, there's Saturday Night Dungeons and

[00:16:43] Des: do not dismiss that. My

kids play d and they are into it, man, lemme tell you.

What

[00:16:49] Mo: Yeah, but they're, I'm not a kid. There's 140 people

[00:16:53] Des: want to

go? Yeah.

[00:16:54] Nasreen: I bet if you went there with a

sparkly dress on

[00:16:56] Mo: I'm kind of loving

[00:16:57] Nasreen: it's my birthday.

[00:16:59] Des: They would adopt you. They

would

[00:17:01] Mo: Yeah, I'm totally going to do

[00:17:02] Des: a Yes. They would adopt you. I seriously, Mo is now in charge of my 55th birthday

party.

[00:17:08] Mo: Saturday Wiggles and Shakes at the library.

[00:17:11] Nasreen: Don't go and address,

[00:17:12] Mo: right, it's

[00:17:12] Nasreen: but

[00:17:13] Des: will break

again. Going down a

[00:17:14] Mo: a. m. It's probably,

[00:17:16] Des: Do you remember that Mo, when you did that at a party?

[00:17:18] Mo: I did that in a hotel. Broke my ankle in

[00:17:23] Des: Was going down a slide, wasn't it?

[00:17:25] Mo: If Wasn't really a slide. was a Art feature next to an escalator that me and other people. Okay to be fair. We were gosh, it was a Def Leppard Mötley Crüe Like we were rock concert for

like six

hours And then we went back to the hotel and that seemed like a good idea with the new friend that I met

[00:17:45] Nasreen: this is what's

happening. Mo is going to plan Des's birthday with AI and we're all going to let you know how it went.

[00:17:53] Des: I don't want to break

[00:17:54] Mo: No.

[00:17:54] Des: No,

[00:17:55] Mo: I have a metal plate and 12 screws for my ankle, you'll never forget Def Leppard.

Nope. And I didn't spill my bottle either, so.

[00:18:04] Des: that's what matters. Look

[00:18:05] Mo: You guys haven't seen that video, clearly, have

[00:18:09] Des: it's been, it's been a bit, it's been All right, I'll but it to

[00:18:14] Mo: the It's not public, it's very, uh, but it made its rounds very

[00:18:18] Nasreen: it in here.

[00:18:19] Mo: I'll send to you. I will lose all credibility I've ever

[00:18:24] Des: back to the subject of AI. The thing is, yes, it'll plan for you in general, but , when I was in Barcelona, sips was named the number one bar in the world while I was there. So that was a, I got to go, I'm going tonight. And I did and I went, but it wouldn't pop up in any AI thing.

It will now, because enough people wrote about it. If you're planning ahead, just be open to other things too. And like Ciaran said, confirm, validate everything you read, and make sure it's open that time of year.

[00:18:54] Ciaran: Another

suggestion.

[00:18:55] Mo: I think we need to do an AI

[00:18:57] Ciaran: is to use it to put together handy lists of emergency numbers, roadside assistance numbers, police numbers, fire numbers, pharmacies, doctors, things that you might find you might spend time researching or you might not even bother with.

Use it like your personal assistant, anything that would be useful to know about the location. Places to park, what are options for parking in X City at x time of day. Things you would want to know and you would spend a lot of time researching.

[00:19:27] Nasreen: Absolutely. And when you're going in and asking for these itineraries and Ciaran has all the things that we need in case we go down a slide and get a screw in our ankle. We can, you can

ask for things

about,

what website, what phone number, what do we need to know?

You can also ask it what people say that you should have known. It can scan reviews. What were the three things people didn't like about this experience? And Des is still laughing over there, so I'm going to tell you that again.

Don't. Because don't go down the slide that's

can't go down between the escalators mo. That's not for sliding on.

[00:20:05] Mo: No, No, no, no, There was this, you'll

see you'll see the video. this big wooden, like, art thing. It totally

[00:20:11] Des: Especially if you've been.

[00:20:12] Mo: I made it over the glass barrier, so I figured I was tall enough to ride.

[00:20:16] Nasreen: going to save you time on TikTok now, and then I'm going to watch this video after. You say you're saying

you go to Instagram, you

go to TikTok, you look for the restaurants or whatever. So I just told Perplexity it's a TikTok trend expert. That based on what videos are trending and being watched a lot and commented on what 25 restaurants should we try in the US . It asked me to select, fine dining, casual fast food.

So I selected fine dining because that's fun. And they have inspired by TikTok restaurants and also anticipated openings that are coming up. I've got a list of 25 and they look pretty good. I'm ready. Mo the Marigold Club in Houston is a lavish supper club serving continental cuisine.

That's coming,

I'm going to tell you when it's coming. Marigold, I'm looking at it,

[00:21:04] Mo: Is it coming by Saturday? I have to come

[00:21:06] Nasreen: so let me look. I'm looking at it right now. It's from Goodnight Hospitality crew. And it is, it does not say,

but it's coming.

[00:21:16] Mo: I mean, I literally made I just make this stuff up. I just said to a bunch of people today, hey, you around Saturday night? And they all said

[00:21:22] Des: And now Des and

Nas and Ciaran are flying in so we can have

[00:21:27] Nasreen: I, I

don't know

[00:21:28] Mo: in,

absolutely. You're welcome to stay.

[00:21:30] Nasreen: that the additional picks based on trends that they're seeing include places with a focus on algae based dishes. Apparently, those are starting to trend.

[00:21:39] Des: Those are good actually. Yes. That's good. Actually, my daughter has loved that. It's, when it's dried out, it's not all slimy.

[00:21:47] Nasreen: I can only think slimy.

[00:21:49] Des: Yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking like, no, no.

[00:21:52] Mo: pond, algae, just give a It's like, that sounds like a California thing. Ciaran,

[00:21:56] Ciaran: thank you.

[00:21:57] Des: Oh, it's actually good and good for you.

[00:21:59] Ciaran: Seaweed. Is

[00:22:00] Des: Think about alga, seaweed. yeah. Seaweed is not algae.

Yeah.It's Going to That's like a, It's going be salty. a seaweed is a plant. Algae is like a

Yeah. I think of it as slimy green, seaweed.

[00:22:18] Ciaran: But like blue spirulina is really hot right now. I've seen it used with cashew butter. There's a company that makes , they call it frosting and it looks like blue raspberry frosting and it's sweet. It's got honey. And cashew butter and blue spirulina in it and it's really super nutritious. You put it on your yogurt and stuff, but I don't know, it just freaks me out a little bit.

[00:22:41] Nasreen: Okay, I'm looking up.

[00:22:43] Mo: oh, it can't give me links, but I do feel kind of cool. I know three out of the eight places on the, based on current trends, some of the best restaurants in Houston with entertainment

[00:22:52] Nasreen: I'm looking for restaurants that you can go out to on what? Friday, Saturday night. Because I have to use AI for this. Okay. Saturday night.

So I asked, it asked me for a type of food. I picked Asian because it seemed like a good option. And then I said, do any of these have a great bar scene?

I don't know that these were the best options because it's saying based on you.

[00:23:11] Nasreen: Yeah,

[00:23:12] Mo: and bar scene go, but, fusion.

[00:23:15] Des: the top hidden gems of Houston. a text. It's from.

[00:23:21] Mo: This is a group effort. I hope all my friends appreciate the amount of effort that's gone into Saturday night. We're either going to Melissa's 40th locally,

[00:23:30] Nasreen: I said that none of them had a good bar scene, it did. It was very helpful and it gave me the suggestion, would you like to see restaurants in Houston with a good bar scene? And it says Bandista, Julep, Anvil Bar and Refuge, EZ's Liquor Lounge.

[00:23:44] Des: Have you been to Moxie's? Moxie's? Looks pretty cool.

[00:23:47] Mo: Oh my god, no. Moxie's is a Canadian chain, and I don't know why because they followed you. Like It looks like a good vibe.

[00:23:56] Ciaran: Yeah, see this is the problem.

[00:23:58] Mo: You know we have dinner, and then you either go into a speakeasy or they have entertainment. Because getting 16 people to go from the suburbs into the city and then go from place to place.

[00:24:08] Des: Have you done Joey Uptown? That's another one. We've covered, AI is good for travel, for things that have been around for a bit, at least six months. Less good for what's happening this weekend. But if you want to go see anything in Barcelona if you've got three days, five days, or just one day, it's going to give you the must dos, but as far as what to do this weekend, it's not hipt. How's that?

[00:24:32] Mo: Well, It's somewhere between my mom packing five travel books for her six weeks in Australia and me going to Berlin with no idea of anything. I just booked it and went and figured This will be your best out. So somewhere will be your, I think you know it on the fly. Like if you're somewhere, say exactly where am I? What do I need to not miss? That's a double negative. What do I need to

[00:24:58] Nasreen: Let's start you off with a list. I found a speakeasy. Yep. You can ask what not to do.

[00:25:04] Mo: I know it's off topic, but it's really cool. It's this Havana speakeasy in the back of this. Like you have to walk through the kitchen of this restaurant Annie's and they have a Cuban band. If you go to the early sitting, it's like 50 bucks. And the later seating is a hundred bucks, but it all goes to the band.

It's like these four guys. And in the middle, it's this little room, it has maybe 16 tables. It has a rum fountain. Like you just take your glass up and fill it with rum and you like salsa dance and oh, it's

[00:25:34] Des: Captain Fox Hart's Bad News Bar and Spirit Lounge. Captain

[00:25:38] Nasreen: That’s either fantastic or horrible. There's no in between there.

[00:25:42] Des: Bad news bar baby.

[00:25:45] Mo: Well, for this crowd, that sounds rather

[00:25:47] Des: I'll send that one to you too.

[00:25:49] Mo: Who?

[00:25:50] Nasreen: Ciaran steers us back to the course she intended for this episode.

[00:25:53] Ciaran: You know what I'm along for the ride.

[00:25:56] Des: Actually tried. I tried, but then I sent myself sideways. Sorry. Apologies.

[00:26:04] Mo: Oh, Des sent it to me.

[00:26:05] Ciaran: What was it? Atmosphere? Is that the app?

[00:26:07] Des: Yes. A-T-M-O-S-F-Y.

[00:26:11] Ciaran: Okay. I am going to run it for Laguna Beach because a friend of mine just asked for recommendations.

[00:26:16] Nasreen: I don't know. I did find my favorite sushi spot on TikTok. I will say that. The algorithm presented it to me. It's called Sushi Sang Lee. It's in Gloucester. It has eight seats. It is omakase. And you go in and it's amazing.

The guy has worked in New York and all these other places. They tell you all about it. Everything is delicious. And my husband and I go there for special occasions now.

[00:26:38] Des: Isn't it interesting how the really top tier places are so exclusive. Like the SIPS bar in Barcelona that got a world number one in the world could only seat 32 people. That is so different than any American bar you go into where they throw 300 people in, even if it only fits 32. Everybody just hugs up at the bar.The line was out the door.

[00:27:03] Nasreen: Yeah.

[00:27:04] Mo: But that's the trend. That's the trend if you can find it and then the ones you can't even find like they're

[00:27:08] Des: Yeah, and they're

[00:27:10] Mo: They’re better. So yeah, there's a sushi place in Houston too that I'd like to try but it's like 175 and you don't get to order. It's the chef but it's like 10 people and there's two seatings.

[00:27:20] Nasreen: That's same here. Yep.

[00:27:22] Des: All right, Ciaran? Didn't you have a cool birthday coming up? Didn't we talk about this?

[00:27:27] Ciaran: 55 also

[00:27:30] Nasreen: A party? When's your birthdays?

[00:27:33] Des: July

[00:27:35] Mo: Perfect. Not that you want to come to Houston in July.

[00:27:37] Des: We'll meet you somewhere. I'm an island girl, preferably, if you want to set it up for, a really cool island.

[00:27:44] Mo: Oh, my friend does have a pretty nice Galveston beach house.

[00:27:47] Des: All right.

[00:27:48] Nasreen: We're going to make it. Hey any other AI tips? Maybe we need a party planning episode where we just plan your party.

[00:27:57] Des: That I could do too. Yeah.

[00:27:59] Ciaran: AI party planning would probably suck. I think it would be really bad, but we can party plan on our own.

[00:28:05] Nasreen: Oh, we should use AI and ask it things like, Hey, plan a lit birthday party for my friend's 55th.

[00:28:12] Des: You know what?

[00:28:14] Mo: Okay, I think we're going to have to do some AI challenges. It might be a weekly thing, okay? So everybody's got to find something on AI.

[00:28:20] Des: I have really fought AI as a writer. It kills me to my core. Last week my boyfriend sat down and said, watch this. It's so cool. And in five minutes he produced a whole video about here in Atlanta, we have a professional volleyball team that just started called the Vibe. For my work we created a video, using video I shot on my iPhone or whatever. He put together a three minute video on this in less than five minutes. The script was written beautifully. There were a couple inaccuracies. The video was horrible because the video doesn't exist on social media yet, but they went to all the same places everybody else goes- Pexels, story blocks- all the same free video sites.

He can go back in and edit it and drop in the video. But it terrifies me as someone who makes her living off writing scripts and producing videos. I told him, I'm not okay with it. It feels like theft.

And he pretty much said it is your replacement get used to it. He's not wrong. We need to figure out how to use it to our advantage or we will be replaced.

[00:29:25] Nasreen: Yeah, there's a huge thing there.

[00:29:27] Mo: For our kids, it's a big, big deal. All of my kids yesterday were doing homework together. Four of them, in three different states. My 15 year old well she needed to find some topics. She's like, just ask chat GPT.

And he’s like, Oh no, I got busted on that once. And she's like, don't get it to write it for you. But like you said, they're idea generators. They should be learning how to manage this. It's part of our everyday life now. Look at us here. You have to figure out how to embrace it and use it so that it is functional and helpful,

[00:29:58] Ciaran: And eventually the cream will rise. Because the thing is that AI is not original and it is not creative. If it appears to be creative or deliver something original, it's because of chaos. It's just random. Humans are creative and humans generate ideas better than AI.

We're just speeding up the process with AI. The final product shouldn't be what AI delivers because that's never going to be as good.

[00:30:27] Des: I'm going to throw this out here. I have a friend who's a professor at University of Dayton in Ohio, and she posted this this morning. When your students drop words like linchpin, plethora, underpinnings and juggernaut in their papers #AIwords.

[00:30:45] Nasreen: I like plethora. That was always a good word.

[00:30:48] Des: But most college students are not using it, and that's.

[00:30:52] Mo: You can ask it to change the tone, right? Make it a little more casual.

[00:30:56] Nasreen: That's my favorite. Please write social media posts with at least 10 emojis in each and a lot of enthusiasm. And then I see what it comes up with because I'm an interactive person, right? And so I work off other ideas. That's where I get my best ideas in conversations and things like that.

So for me with AI generating a list I may not agree with it. I may argue with it. It's going to give me better points for what I'm doing because I'm using it as a framework to just get my brain warmed up. But the biggest thing, and one of the things that came up, again, this my B2B moment for conferences, is one of the questions that was asked on stage at a conference. How do you look at applicants who have a good knowledge of AI? Or how you ask them about AI in an interview?

Is it good? Is it bad? Do you ask if they use AI? And it was a negative moment. Afterwards, I'm putting my hand up. Look, do you know what it tells me if someone can use AI productively? They know how to ask good questions and anyone who can ask good questions and get the answers that they want is someone who can be proactive and look up answers and ask the right questions to other teams and be ahead of things going wrong, and there's nothing wrong with that.

[00:32:01] Ciaran: Prompt engineering is like the number one growth job right now in the country. Amazon has free training. Microsoft has free training. I would encourage my kids and even consider doing the free training myself because that's just where the world is going.

And there's no avoiding it. I think the more we embrace it and stop trying to fight it, the better it's going to come out for us. If we're trying to game the system and avoid it, then we are going to end up with the terminator.

[00:32:31] Nasreen: Yeah, just make sure to thank the robots.

[00:32:34] Mo: Well, all four of us are like early adopters of everything, right? There's a reason why the four of us know each other is because we were like in the OG blogging world.

[00:32:42] Des: We're such dinosaurs. Who here has posted a TikTok video?

[00:32:51] Nasreen: I love TikTok. I love it, but,

[00:32:52] Des: I love watching it.

[00:32:54] Mo: And I have a whole plan.

[00:32:56] Nasreen: I posted one about my dogs yesterday.

[00:32:58] Des: Y'all get me on board please, because I need to embrace it. I love watching it. I actually was forbidden by my daughter from posting anything on TikTok to begin with. She's, “Please leave me one social.”

[00:33:09] Nasreen: I've got to tell you, if I had to make a mock tween account right now because they use it completely differently, right? Our age group, basically 32 and up, is using it in one way. And if you are in your teens, like especially early teens right now, they're lip syncing lyrics and making faces it's

[00:33:29] Des: We did that in eighth grade.

[00:33:30] Nasreen: I know, but that, and that's all it is though. Like it's 20 second clips of people lip syncing and being like, “Feel cute. Might delete this later.”

[00:33:38] Des: Yeah.

[00:33:39] Mo: Yeah. I love TikTok. I actually have learned more from TikTok about stocks and the economy and politics and world things. But hey, there's three of you and I'll just see you could make me go over.

[00:33:51] Des: I'm on it. Am I not your friend yet?

[00:33:54] Ciaran: I have 1300.

[00:33:55] Mo: And, I did some fun things. I do have one baby viral video, the MILF muffins.

[00:34:00] Nasreen: Oh my. I don’t know what this is, but I need to.

[00:34:03] Des: This is Mo. This is Mo out on Friday nights, rocking her cast doing the slide,

[00:34:10] Mo: Oh yeah, no, I wasn't broken. This is a ladies trip to Panama City Beach. There's five of us. We'd had a day on the beach and decided to do the Muffin Man dance and we killed it.

[00:34:22] Ciaran: But we just want to be as cool as you and your friends.

[00:34:26] Mo: Then you can also see my trailer trash Tammy party where we all dressed up as a trailer trash and went on a party Bus to Houston.

[00:34:34] Nasreen: I’m really upset that we didn't overlap in Texas more. I feel like this would've been fun.

[00:34:41] Nasreen: I don't interact normally with people I know on TikTok. It's just somewhere for me to go watch funny videos and put up random stuff.

[00:34:46] Mo: I'm kind of worried after these videos

[00:34:49] Des: She will. Nas is fun. I'll say, this is my superpower, connecting people. Oprah always said, what's your superpower? I love connecting people and I remember thinking, you guys will all jam.

[00:35:00] Nasreen: We're in different TikTok groups. Like my top videos are toddler meals and dogs.

[00:35:06] Mo: Oh, I can open whole

[00:35:07] Ciaran: I'm on Author Talk, so mine is my author name. It's Cierra Bloom Author.

[00:35:13] Nasreen: My goodness.Twelve thousand people watched my four year old's meal. That's my claim to fame.

[00:35:18] Mo: Oh, that beats mine. I'm going to

[00:35:19] Des: Yeah, I did post two videos apparently. One was a turtle boil where they all hatched out of the nest. Oh no. It's super cool. It's not cooking.

[00:35:28] Nasreen: I'm sorry….

[00:35:29] Des: It’s called a boil. It's when they hatch out of the nest, like hundreds of them all at once. They call it a turtle boil because it's like the sand is boiling over and all of a sudden you see hundreds of little baby turtles.

[00:35:41] Nasreen: That’s a disgusting name.

[00:35:42] Des: It's what they call it!

[00:35:44] Mo: Why don't they just call it a turtle cooler?

[00:35:47] Nasreen: Eruption would be better.

[00:35:49] Des: I'm just going to say for the record, if you ever want to see a turtle hatching, I am the queen of seeing them. I know exactly what they look like when they're just getting ready to come out. The sand sort of caves in and

[00:35:59] Nasreen: I'm Maureen. Stop it. You've had a bottle. I'm sorry, people, we just,

[00:36:03] Mo: I have plenty left.

[00:36:04] Nasreen: I have to bring it up so that I don't forget. And then we need to wrap this up because we've been talking about AI and TikTok for a while now. But did you know that BarkBox had to send out an apology because they apparently didn't know what 69 meant?

Sent out an email to everybody talking about how we 69 our friends, and it was about if you share it, they get $69 off and you get $69.

[00:36:26] Des: Oh my word.

[00:36:28] Ciaran: And everybody gets off. Somebody knew exactly what they were doing.

[00:36:32] Nasreen: They put out the apology for it. It’s all we're sorry, we didn't realize blah, blah, blah. They literally had two dogs like licking each other as the main image for it.

[00:36:41] Des: They knew exactly what they were doing. That's, yeah.

[00:36:45] Nasreen: Okay, I'm done. I'm going to have to mark this one

explicit.

[00:36:48] Mo: That is a great story, though,

[00:36:50] Des: Okay.

[00:36:51] Nasreen: Okay. So this has been a trip. It started out as AI and went into TikTok and now we know all about Maureen's party life and she'll be leading some tours if you're interested. If you would like to go on a party bus that's themed and dress up and slide down things and not break your foot because she learned from that experience then she is going to take you out and show you a good time.

[00:37:13] Mo: I am the fun one.

[00:37:15] Des: You are the chill.

[00:37:18] Mo: I cannot guarantee what will happen, but it will never be boring.

[00:37:21] Nasreen: I'm excited. I'm excited. I want know how we're going to AI to plan the birthday party.

[00:37:26] Mo: We’ve got the double birthday this year.

[00:37:28] Des: End of July. That way it hits right in between the two of us.

[00:37:32] Nasreen: We’ve got to figure out how many people? Where are we gathering that we can get the most critical mass of people with a good area that isn't ridiculous.

[00:37:40] Des: I actually have

started planning this.

[00:37:41] Mo: Cruise in a hurricane

[00:37:43] Des: Absolutely. That would be our style.

[00:37:46] Mo: It'd be great content.

[00:37:47] Des: A cocktail hour thing. We're working on our destination but we're doing a four day jaunt.

But y'all know Keryn Means?

[00:37:54] Nasreen: Of course, she's lovely.

[00:37:57] Des: She is.

She likes cocktails like I do.

[00:38:00] Nasreen: My goal for this year outside of AI and podcasting and all that is to go to one of those cocktail parties where it's themed. Everyone they get assigned a color, a book or whatever. They show up with a tray of cocktails. I like that. Okay. AI travel planning, you should do it. Don't rely on it entirely. Use it to set the basics to look at and save you some time. Perplexity is a good one. We like Atmosfy.

[00:38:24] Des: The new Layla one is super cool

too.

[00:38:26] Nasreen: Until next time when we talk about something else. Thank the robots and travel.

[00:38:32] Des: Safe travels.

[00:38:35] Mo: Have fun.

[00:38:35] Narrator: This has been another episode of Time to Talk Travel, brought to you by HashtagTravels. com. You can keep in touch with us between episodes by checking out our site, joining our newsletter, or connecting with us on social. We've always got the information you need in our episode notes. Until next time, happy travels, and thanks for being a part of our trip.