AI Chatbot Vacation Planner Showdown Surprise Winner

The Great AI Travel Planner Experiment

To plan a recent four-day family vacation to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota, I decided to put artificial intelligence to the test. I tasked five different AI chatbots with creating a comprehensive travel itinerary. My request was specific: I needed a plan that included a visit to the Badlands, suggestions for gas stops, a complete grocery list, activity recommendations, and even lodging options.

Google Gemini Best for Maps

It came as no surprise that Google Gemini excelled at mapping out the trip. Thanks to its seamless integration with Google Maps, it could display the route directly within the chat interface, a feature other bots lacked. It even personalized the route starting from my specific home address.

However, Gemini fell short in other areas. The chatbot was not very helpful with the detailed itinerary and surprisingly refused to suggest specific places for gas or food. Instead, it advised me to use the Google Maps app on my phone for those needs, defeating the purpose of an AI assistant. Its food suggestions were generic, listing items like eggs and bacon without creating actual meal plans. On the plus side, it offered a great lodging recommendation: a KOA campground in Keystone, SD, which was both affordable and conveniently located near Mt. Rushmore.

ChatGPT The Most Confusing

Despite its popularity, ChatGPT performed the worst in this travel planning challenge. A major flaw was its illogical itinerary, which suggested staying one night in the Badlands. This makes little sense for a family trip, given that the main attractions in the Black Hills are only about 75 miles further.

The mapping feature was also unreliable. My first attempt resulted in a broken map link. A second try generated a note about a map but provided no link at all. It wasn't until the third attempt that the map finally worked. Furthermore, ChatGPT only provided a grocery list without suggesting meals, and its recommendation to visit six different overlooks in the Badlands was impractical and overly time-consuming for a short trip.

Microsoft Copilot The Worst Results

Even though Copilot is based on ChatGPT technology, its results were significantly different and highly impractical. It didn't provide an exact travel route, instead just listing a few points of interest along the way and outsourcing the actual routing to another website.

Copilot's suggestions were disjointed; it listed grocery stores near the Badlands without a corresponding route and then recommended gas stations that weren't even on the way. The grocery list was provided without any meal plans. While it did find some budget-friendly camper cabins, the overall advice was so minimal that it was almost useless for actual planning.

Claude Best for Pitstop Suggestions

Claude proved to be quite helpful, with one significant exception: its overall route. Like ChatGPT, it suggested an inefficient overnight stay in Wall, South Dakota, near the Badlands.

Despite this glitch, Claude excelled in other areas. It was far superior at recommending specific, conveniently located places to stop for gas and food along the highway. It also created a well-timed schedule, detailing when to start driving each day to fit in all suggested destinations, including a side trip to the Crazy Horse Memorial. Claude also cleverly designed a shorter route through the vast Badlands to keep the total travel distance under the requested 1,400-mile limit.

Deepseek The Overall Winner

Deepseek emerged as the clear winner for one simple reason: its suggestions were the most logical and practical. It was the only chatbot to understand that the Badlands was a stopover, not an overnight destination. It correctly identified Custer State Park in the Black Hills as the main "home base" for the entire trip and routed me there directly.

Its grocery list was far more useful than the others because it was tied to a complete meal plan for every breakfast, lunch, and dinner of the trip. While it didn't list specific gas and food stops along the route, it excelled at planning the activities. Deepseek brilliantly organized the trip by giving each day a theme, such as a scenic focus for day one (Wind Cave) and a historical focus for day two (monuments). In the end, I used the Deepseek itinerary for my family's vacation—from the lodging and route to the grocery list and meals—and the trip was a fantastic success.