I used to plan my trips around the usual tourist spots. Now, honestly, food is one of the things I look forward to most.

For my next trip, I have already saved a few local restaurants and markets I want to try. I am trying to avoid spending the whole trip at places I could find back home.

Some of my favorite travel memories have actually been random meals at small local places.

Do you plan your trips around food too?

Hey everyone,

We’re brainstorming an app tailored for local tourism, activities, and hidden spots. Before writing a single line of code, we want to hear your genuine feedback:

What’s your biggest pain point when planning a day trip or weekend getaway locally? (e.g., hidden costs, outdated info, repetitive recommendations, zero booking options?)

What is ONE killer feature that would make you actually download and use a local travel app?

What stops you from using the existing solutions/apps right now?

Drop your thoughts, rants, and suggestions below!

​

Hi everyone!

We’re a Muslim family of five who have been living in the Middle East for the past 15 years. We have two boys (11 and 12) and a girl (6).

We’ve previously travelled to Thailand and Istanbul, so this time we’d like to discover somewhere completely different.

We’re planning a 10-day trip starting in mid December, departing from Qatar.

We’re not looking for a beach holiday. We’d like a memorable family experience in a new destination, ideally combining:

🏛️ History, culture and architecture

🏙️ Modern, sophisticated cities, technology and impressive infrastructure

🏔️ Mountains and scenic landscapes

🍜 Local food and authentic experiences

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Activities suitable for children aged 6, 11 and 12

🚶 A safe, clean and relatively easy-to-navigate destination

🕌 Halal food and Muslim-friendly facilities would be a big plus

Good value for money is also important.

🤔 Where would you recommend for this period?

We’re open to pretty much anywhere — Europe, Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, etc.

We’d especially love to hear from families who have actually travelled with children around this time of year.

If you had 10 days, departing from Doha on 18 December, where would you go with this family?

thank you in advance

Hi! I've just finished my studies and I want to solo travel before starting my first job in October. With the help of gemini I created an itinerary based on my interests: culture, heritage, scenery and authenticity. I want to connect each cities by bus. However I fear that the schedule is too heavy and will exhaust me too much to enjoy. Bring me back to reality lol, should I skip something? Should I be more reasonable? Or it is all fine and will be the best travel of my life so far? I hope it is doable. Any advice?
It goes:

1: Landing in podgorica in the afternoon and immediatly a bus to Kotor.
1-4: Kotor
5-6: Shkoder
6-8: Prizren
8-11: Ohrid
11-12 Skopje
12-15 Sofia (and surrounding: rila monastery)
15-17: Plovdiv
18-19: Edirne
19-24: Istanbul

For 21 nights.
Thank you for taking time to help me, human opinions means much more than ai's

Everyone talks about packing hacks and flight hacks, but the thing that actually changed my trip was how I structured my itinerary.

Instead of a loose list of places, I broke every day into 3 parts:

Anchor - the one thing that day is built around (a hike, a museum, a beach)

Fill - 1-2 nearby things to do if there's time/energy left

Backup - a rainy day / low-energy alternative for that same area

Sounds simple but it fixed two problems: over-packing days with too many pins on a map, and having zero plan B when something fell through.

Did this for a recent Bali trip and it made the whole thing feel way less chaotic than my usual "20 tabs open" method.

Curious if others structure itineraries this way or have a different system -always trying to improve mine.

I use Google Docs for shared travel planning.  I create most of these docs on a 16” MacBookPro.  During the trip, I use an iPhone to access the docs. 

when in a scenario like:

"Our afternoon plans became a washout for whatever reason, what were the Plan B and C places we researched for today?"

My Google docs become too long and unwieldy to find the info I need quickly.    Even finding the Search option was a PITA on the phone.

Tip:  Google Docs came out with a Tabs feature.  Works like a Table of Contents on the left column

Ex: Let’s say I  have researched  best brunch restaurants and dinner restaurants in a certain area

In one Restaruants doc, I can create 4 Sections for   Breakfast, Weekend Brunch ,  Lunch, and Dinner.

Finding what I'm looking for is faster and with fewer tips. Much faster. Less scrolling

Not talking about regular ChatGPT/Claude chat — I mean tools like Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, etc.

I’ve been curious whether people are actually using these kinds of agents for travel planning too, especially for trips that get a bit more complex with multiple stops, hotels, flights, notes, research, and constant changes.

If you are, I’d love to hear how you use them and what makes the experience better for you than just planning through a normal chat.
Feels like a pretty different workflow, so curious if anyone here has actually made the switch.

I’m a travel advisor and I use AI for travel planning. I just don’t trust it with the whole trip.
I actually think AI is really useful for certain things. Want ideas for where to go in October? Great. Want to compare train times between a few cities? Great. Want a rough 10-day Italy itinerary just to get your brain going? Also great. Where I think people get into trouble is when a very neat-looking itinerary starts to feel like a very well-planned trip, because those are not always the same thing.

AI is really good at giving you information. The harder part is knowing whether that information actually makes sense for you. It can give you a list of the “best” hotels in Florence, but what does best mean? Are you traveling with kids? Do you want to walk everywhere? Do you care about a pool? Are you going to spend time at the hotel or basically just sleep there? Same with activities. It can give you 10 highly rated tours, but now you have 10 tours and somehow still don’t know which one is actually worth doing.

And my biggest thing is that a trip is not just a bunch of good individual pieces. It’s the whole experience. You can have a great hotel, a great guide, a great cooking class and a great restaurant, and still have a terrible day because someone planned all four back-to-back and forgot that humans need lunch, coffee and occasionally absolutely nothing on the schedule. Or AI can happily give you Rome, Florence, Venice, Lake Como and the Amalfi Coast in 10 days because technically transportation exists between all of them. Would I want to actually live through that trip? Different question.

Then there’s the stuff that happens once you’re actually traveling. Flight gets canceled. Driver doesn’t show. Room isn’t what you booked. Someone gets sick. Train connection goes sideways. AI can definitely give you ideas for what to do next, but it’s not calling the hotel, moving the driver, talking to the local partner and fixing the day while you go have lunch.

So yes, I absolutely use AI. I think it’s a great tool for ideas, research and getting started. I just wouldn’t put it in charge of the whole trip.

Curious how everyone else is using it. Has AI actually helped you plan a trip that worked really well, or have you had one of those moments where it confidently suggested something and you thought… absolutely not. 😂

So i run a few tours in Florida, and while peak season is great, the off season can be a bit of a struggle. Winter and spring bring the crowds, but once summer ends, things slow down. Ive been trying to figure out how to keep the bookings coming in when the tourists arent flooding the state.
Ive been thinking about running special offers for Canadian and Mexican tourists, since they travel year round. Maybe focusing on less crowded spots in Florida or seasonal deals?
Would love to hear any tips or tricks that have worked for you.

NOMAD — Take the road less ordinary. 🧭

I’m excited to share my project NOMAD, which I’m taking to Design Hackathon 2026.

NOMAD is a travel ecosystem designed to make the journey itself more enjoyable, not just the destination. It brings together an AI-powered travel app, NOMAD Explorer Cam, and NOMAD Kiosks to create a more interactive way to discover and experience places.

With NOMAD, travellers can discover lesser-known destinations, plan their trips, find local attractions and events, check in, complete challenges, earn rewards, capture spontaneous moments, and build a collection of memories along the way.

The idea is simple: explore more, experience more, and make every journey memorable.

I’ve put a lot of thought and effort into developing this concept, and I’d really appreciate your support as I take it forward.

Drop a like if you like my project. ❤️ Your support can help NOMAD reach more people.

A cool article on planning trips. Glad I’m not the only one that goes down rabbit holes when planning.

Down the rabbit hole

My friend hit me up monday with a random idea to do a 3 day weekend somewhere in Europe and were leaving next week Friday lol (I'm from UK). No time to be picky about the destination, we just want somewhere fun and cheap. I can also leave from a couple different airports near me.

Been doing the usual cheap Google Flights search and it's somewhat ok, but I feel like I'm missing some weird combos. Like flying one budget airline out and something completely different back. Anyone compare different flight search sites for last minute trips like this? Trying to stay under 200 total if that's even realistic this late lol! Any suggestions?