We recently took our first joint trip to Europe to Bath, England, and it turned out to be the trip of a lifetime for us both. With little else planned aside from purchasing the flights almost a full year in advance and the plan to do a campus tour of Bath Spa University—there wasn’t much else we had planned on the itinerary aside from that.

So, being the tech-driven individual I am—I let AI plan the entirety of our trip.

Why Use AI to Plan?

Now, I can’t take all of the credit. I’m an avid YouTube follower of Kara and Nate, and they mentioned this particular travel resource, MagicTravel. Of course, I had to look into it and at least see if we could gain some ideas at the very least. We didn’t plan to stay in any other city while we visited, giving our full attention to Bath.

Note: As of this blog posting on February 22, 2024, MagicTravel is currently disabled to the public. You’re more than welcome to sign up with them to stay updated.

Clay has never been to Europe, and thankfully I had a summer trip with my brother that truly helped me understand the ins and outs of public transportation in other countries. So, while planning our itinerary, I completely left out any travel days. A fun hack to learn as you plan your travel—don’t plan for anything fun on travel-heavy days!

Avoid Planning During Travel Days

Trains are one of the most prominent travel companions that I prefer, but trains are often delayed, and it takes a while to learn how to navigate that new world of transportation—especially as an American.

Avoid planning on direct travel days because of this learning curve, at least if you’re new to the travel game. Plus, we still were able to enjoy a few fun things on our travel days if we arrived with time to spare!

With that in mind, I only entered our days while in Bath. I fed it where we were staying since we had also lined that up (all using miles and points!) We also entered previously booked excursions, such as the campus tour day.

Mind you, we had to change the dates on our entire itinerary at one point because our flights decided to change from a Sat-Sat schedule instead of a Sun-Sun. Be sure to monitor the heck out of international flights!

Now for the Fun Part: Activity Planning

Once we put in that information, the AI asked us what activities we were interested in to narrow our options even further. There was also an option to input how many meals a day we expected to have on top of our dietary requirements and a budget we wanted to stick to per day, and it made the best recommendations for places to stop and try.

Watching it generate the itinerary in real-time was mind-blowing, and while I’ve played around with AI before in the form of ChatGPT for mundane tasks—this was a whole new world to explore and play with. Plus, it recommended excursions and activities we may not have thought to look into.

I nearly jumped with giddiness when I saw Stonehenge and the Cotswolds show up as possibilities. Not only that, but local activities such as touring the Roman Baths, Bath Abbey, the Jane Austen Museum, the Holburne Museum, Mary Shelley’s House of Frankenstein—so many options that I could have spent hours roaming Google to combine into an itinerary.

A Magical AI Itinerary

Magic (now Ascend Travel) provided a day-by-day itinerary of visiting the places we selected from its recommendations to give us adequate time for each activity. Yes, it also gives you an estimated time that each activity would take. Which we doubled, because we know how we are when traveling.

Not only that but for certain options, it provides you with links to make your bookings or even buy tickets ahead of time. It even recommended which tickets should be purchased in advance due to sellouts! The level of sorcery behind this program is unmatched. We took its sage advice and bought tickets in advance for numerous activities and found an affordable option to visit Stonehenge during our trip.

Would We Use an AI Itinerary Again?

Overall, we highly enjoyed our trip, all provided by an AI itinerary. Of course, in certain areas, we did deviate, especially in the food department. But that changed mainly because we often skipped breakfast or lunch due to distraction and would go into the restaurants and establishments nearest to us at the time. We wandered and walked a lot!

I highly recommend using an AI travel tool and will use this feature ferociously for future trips! Want to see our final travel itinerary for free? Subscribe to my newsletter and get a copy for yourself—feel free to use it as inspiration for your future Bath, England trip.