Is AI taking away the connection in travel?
Usually, the best travel experiences are chock-full of surprises. Part and parcel of adventure is the anxiety of things going terribly wrong, from missing trains to getting lost. But often, this break in routine pushes you to connect with both people and place, and come home a little bit changed.
Now that AI is embedded into travel—from transportation to translation—itineraries just aren’t as spontaneous, as technology tells us what to expect before we even arrive.
I think of kids on their iPads at restaurants, sealed inside a tiny digital vacuum where the sounds of the restaurant, the smell of food, and the people around them disappear. Could travel become like that, too, as a place experienced solely through a screen?
The algorithm has first say
A recent study by Statista reported that 40 percent of travelers now use AI-based tools for trip planning. There’s a growing array of itinerary-building apps that can map out your trip if you feed it your destination, budget, and interests. Even ubiquitous platforms like Canva or Trip.com can generate day-by-day travel schedules in seconds.
While convenient, AI aggregates trends and viral reviews, which can saturate recommendations toward the same “best” places over and over again.
For our honeymoon in Paris, I encoded every cute café, bookstore, and supposedly “hidden corner” I’d saved from Instagram into Gemini. It generated a wildly packed itinerary that looked beautiful on paper. But it was completely impossible in real life, and we barely followed it.
Meanwhile, my cousin, who has lived in Paris for over a decade, sent us a guide I could tell she worked hard on.
“Spend the day wandering the Rive Gauche,” she writes. “Rent a Vélib’. Start at the Louvre, bike down Rue de Rivoli, then cross the Seine at Pont Alexandre III. You’ll get fantastic views of the Concorde, Grand Palais, and Invalides.”
She also adds, “For romantic Paris… Start the day at Musée Rodin. Have coffee in the garden while looking at ‘The Thinker’ and ‘The Kiss.’ Tumultuous history here! Definitely watch the movie ‘Camille Claudel’ prior.”
Her tips, while not an itinerary, were more relaxed, with her own personal context imbued into her notes. As we followed her guide, it gave the trip color that an optimized AI schedule couldn’t.
Getting lost is part of the point
On another trip in Taiwan, after nearly 12,000 steps, I was eager to get back to the hotel. My arms were weighed down with pasalubong-filled shopping bags, and my legs felt like jelly. Turning to Google Maps, the app recommended we walk another 20 minutes between subway transfers.
My mother, a seasoned New Yorker, brushed off my AI-recommended travel route and spent a minute or two looking at the subway routes. After mentally tracking our way, I blindly followed her, and we cut the walking time to five minutes. This is where I realized that AI still hasn’t fully caught up with humans’ common sense.
There have been numerous studies that show smartphone apps reduce spatial recognition, making people “too dependent on technology without understanding the tangible world around them” (Maxwell, Geography Realm). From long-term medical effects on memory to getting lost more easily, or just not appreciating a place enough, it’s a classic case of “losing sight of the forest for the trees.”
The same goes for restaurants. Many of us are guilty of hunting for “the best” places online, scrolling through reviews that shape expectations before the food arrives. This removes the magic of simply walking into a random place because it smells good or looks lively. And if the restaurant turns out mediocre… well, that’s part of travel, too, where not everything goes perfectly.
The best souvenir is personal connection
Often, the greatest part of traveling is the people you meet en route.
Driving from the Dordogne to Paris, we wandered into a brasserie tucked beside a subway road. The owner, a ginormous, jolly man, expressed awe at our arrival. He had never met a Filipino before, or even an Asian! He became so enthralled that he handed us a huge block of foie gras for free, and proceeded to belt opera. My Filipino companions spoke to him in broken French, and I understood none of it. But it was magical.
The same goes for physical tours over audio guides, which allow space for conversations off-script. On our recent Taiwan trip, we joined a walking tour run by a schoolteacher. He wasn’t on any app or travel platform, which he said takes big chunks from tour guides’ earnings. You simply tipped him at the end, so he gets full commissions.
He shared about his early life growing up during Taiwan’s 38-year martial law period (something glossed over in AI guides as well), recounting how their “playground” games were labeled a “military exercise center,” and school songs were actually anthems ceaselessly praising Chiang Kai-shek. These comments on the political underbelly wouldn’t pass on an AI travel guide, either.
In terms of language barriers, AI has broken them down, too. So what could have been a 10-minute back-and-forth deciphering a menu with a waiter (and ordering something God-awful), translation apps smooth these “lost in translation” moments over. But isn’t that part of the fun?
The art of asking for directions is waning, too. I’ve often been surprised at how people will go out of their way to walk us to where we need to go, with few words said, communicating only through smiles and wild gestures.
Convenience versus connection
Of course, AI isn’t all bad. Google Maps has helped us all get out of a pickle. And overall, AI removes logistical stress in travel. For flight delays, weather changes, rerouting, or rebooking hotels, AI makes all of that dramatically easier than frantically phoning a hotline to find out the status of your flight.
And while AI can remove stress, couldn’t stress be what makes travel transformative in the first place? Navigating uncertainty helps patience, getting lost trains adaptability, and asking strangers for help forces interaction.
Don’t forget to look up!
Gustave Flaubert, author of “Madame Bovary,” writes, “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”
When travel becomes overly optimized on a screen, it’s easier to forget the vastness of the world in front of you, and you stay sealed inside a digital vacuum. But I argue that the best parts of traveling are the least efficient ones, from getting lost to talking to strangers, and accidentally wandering into a place because the best trips are the ones you can’t predict.
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