How to Plan a Holiday Using AI

Where technology helps, where human judgement matters, and why both belong in modern travel planning.

AI has officially entered the holiday planning chat.

For some travellers, it brings a welcome sense of confidence, encouraging them to think more adventurously and explore destinations they might not have considered before. For others, it’s a novelty, an interesting experiment with a technology that still feels relatively new. Both reactions are understandable. Curiosity is part of the fun.

But we’re not planning a vegetable garden here. Holidays are expensive, time is limited, and for many people those two precious weeks of downtime matter enormously. When you’re spending thousands of pounds, you want to feel confident that your hard-earned money is being spent well, on something that genuinely suits you, rather than on an idea that simply sounded convincing on a screen.

For many travel advisors, this new wave of AI-generated itineraries has felt less exciting. I’ve lost count of the number of conversations that start with, “ChatGPT suggested we do this,” followed by a plan that ignores weather, geography, travel time, ethics, or basic reality. That doesn’t mean AI is useless. Far from it.

It means it needs to be used properly.

The Problem with Generic AI Travel Planning

Most off-the-shelf AI tools are built to be generalists. They are designed to sound confident, not to understand you. They don’t know your values, your travel style, your tolerance for early starts, long drives, or hectic pacing. They don’t know that swimming with captive dolphins is a hard no, or that visiting Southeast Asia in peak monsoon season might not be the idyllic experience you were picturing.

When clients come to me with AI-generated plans like this, we often have to unpick everything before we can even begin asking the right questions. That doesn’t save time. It burns it.

AI planning only works when the foundations are right.

Where AI Does Belong in Holiday Planning

Used well, AI can be a genuinely helpful starting point in the holiday planning process. It excels at early inspiration, helping travellers explore ideas and articulate what they want when their thoughts are still forming. At this stage, AI can support reflection around priorities, timing, travel style, pace, and the kind of experiences that matter most, bringing clarity to what can otherwise feel like an overwhelming blank page. Where it falls short is in pricing, availability, bookings, or final decision-making, all of which rely on live data, accountability, and professional judgement. In other words, AI works best at the beginning of the journey, helping to shape the brief, not at the end where expertise and human oversight are essential.

Why I Built Virtual Marie

Virtual Marie exists because I could see both sides of the problem.

On one hand, clients are curious about using AI. On the other, generic tools were sending them down unhelpful, and sometimes unethical, rabbit holes. I didn’t want to fight that curiosity. I wanted to channel it.

So I built a CustomGPT designed for one very specific purpose: helping clients prepare properly before we work together.

Virtual Marie is not a booking engine. It doesn’t give prices. It doesn’t confirm availability. It doesn’t replace me. Its entire role is preparation and clarity.

What Makes Virtual Marie Different

What makes Virtual Marie different is not what it does, but what it deliberately doesn’t do. It has been designed with clear boundaries, focusing on preparation and clarity rather than pretending to be a booking engine or decision-maker. Instead of generating generic itineraries, it concentrates on asking the questions many travellers don’t realise they need to answer, gently guiding reflection around timing, pace, priorities, values, and what will truly make a trip feel worthwhile. Responsible travel is built into that process, with careful consideration given to seasonality, ethical experiences, and conscious choices, reflecting the way I plan holidays in real life. The result isn’t a ready-made itinerary, but a thoughtful, personal travel brief that gives me meaningful insight to work from, allowing the planning process to start in the right place rather than having to unravel it later.

Why Human Expertise Still Matters

AI doesn’t carry responsibility. I do.

Every itinerary I design is reviewed, refined, and built by me, using professional judgement, destination knowledge, trusted partners, and an understanding of how all the moving parts fit together in the real world. AI can support that process, but it cannot replace it.

AI is also, by its very nature, indifferent. It doesn’t care about you, your trip, or what happens if something goes wrong. It won’t provide 24/7 global support when flights are cancelled or plans unravel, and it certainly won’t step in during an emergency. It doesn’t offer financial protection, and it won’t quietly email your hotel ahead of your arrival to flag dietary requirements, room preferences, anniversaries, or the small details that make a stay feel considered rather than transactional. Those things still rely on human accountability, relationships, and someone taking responsibility for the experience as a whole, not just generating an answer that sounds plausible.

That’s why anything created with Virtual Marie is always vetted and verified by a human expert. Specifically, me.

The technology helps us start in the right place. The expertise ensures we finish in the right one.

The Smarter Way to Use AI for Travel

If you’re going to use AI to plan a holiday, use it as a thinking partner, not a decision-maker.

Let it help you reflect, prioritise, and articulate what you want. Then hand that thinking to someone who knows how to turn it into a journey that actually works.

Virtual Marie was built to do exactly that. It’s there to make the early stages calmer, clearer, and more useful, so when we start planning properly, we’re already speaking the same language.

AI can enhance travel planning. But only when it knows its place.

And that place is firmly alongside, not instead of, human care and expertise.

Getting Started

If you’re curious to see how AI can help inspire your next adventure through a natural, unhurried conversation, Virtual Marie is there to guide you through the early thinking. It’s designed to help you reflect, explore ideas, and prepare a clear travel brief you can then hand over to the real human expert, Marie, who will review it, challenge it where needed, and design the journey properly. Used this way, AI becomes a helpful starting point rather than a false shortcut.

Try Virtual Marie