Are algorithms truly making our journeys higher – or are they optimizing the serendipity out of journey?

Théodora Armstrong’s newest guide is Welcome to Sunny Town.

My first journey with a boyfriend was a six-week backpacking trek by Thailand in 1999, once I was 20 years previous. We purchased two airline tickets, and that was it. We didn’t guide resorts or prepare different transportation. We didn’t set up any excursions or plan any sightseeing itineraries. We landed in Bangkok with solely a guidebook and hopped in a taxi, heading straight for Khao San Road. The really useful hostels had been both booked or too costly, so we wandered the neighbourhood till we discovered a emptiness. We didn’t personal cellphones, and social media was years sooner or later, however even when we had digicam telephones and digital profiles, there was nothing Instagram-worthy concerning the place we stayed. I by no means thought to take an image of the closet-sized room overlooking visitors chaos on the road beneath. Yet many years later, I nonetheless vividly keep in mind the spot. It represented independence.

Just a few years after that journey to Thailand, I married the boyfriend, and we continued our adventures world wide, although our method to planning journeys advanced over time. Now, as an alternative of guidebooks, Instagram is my default supply for journey inspiration, and these days, I’ve been investigating AI-generated itineraries. The journeys appear to need to plan themselves lately. Any trip discuss within the neighborhood of my cellphone triggers the algorithmic synapses, and earlier than lengthy, my feeds are inundated with vacation solutions. It’s exhausting to not be lured by these curation engines parading flawless journey content material, however these days I’ve been questioning how our digital ecosystems change the best way we plan a visit or expertise a vacation spot. Are algorithms truly making our journeys higher? Or are they optimizing the serendipity out of journey?

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My freewheeling method to journey within the nineties wasn’t distinctive. In reality, it was a typical ceremony of passage for twentysomethings with the means for an airline ticket. There was a unique form of idealization round journey on the flip of the century. We needed to wander aimlessly with a stranger round a overseas metropolis like within the film Before Sunrise. Was there extra willingness to give up to destiny again then? Were we extra resilient exterior our consolation zone? Or did we merely not have a selection? Forced to navigate paper maps, we regularly discovered ourselves misplaced. The spontaneity of journey earlier than smartphones could possibly be many issues without delay: thrilling, mystical, irritating, lonely. But for higher or for worse, we regularly got here away with a greater sense of ourselves, and wasn’t that the purpose of journey?

Since having youngsters, my husband and I wouldn’t try a visit with out concrete plans and lodge bookings. But I nonetheless hunt down these under-the-radar experiences freed from selfie queues. For occasion, on a latest journey to France, I took my household on a day journey to Versailles. For an additional €10 we secured a tour of the King’s personal residences, which allowed us to skip the ticket line and entry off-limit areas of the chateau with a information – nicely well worth the modest add-on payment. Afterward, we joined the plenty within the grand corridors, everybody converging on the Hall of Mirrors, an influencer Mecca. A fast search will uncover a whole lot of photographs of the empty corridor with influencers posed in princess-core clothes, channelling their greatest Marie. There are on-line guides laying out methods for getting forward of the crowds to get the perfect shot, which embody arriving an hour earlier than opening, and beelining for the corridor, ignoring 400 years of historical past alongside the best way – the purpose not baroque structure or a window into courtroom tradition, however an aesthetic picture pinned to the grid, magically freed from the literal crush of tourism.

Instagram, particularly, has basically reshaped our journey ambitions, altering the best way we view locations. A vacation turns into social capital; a picturesque cityscape turns into a visible model; cultural delicacies turns into a viral second. Last 12 months, anti-tourism protests escalated throughout southern Europe, most notably in locations like Barcelona, the place pissed off residents received worldwide consideration after fending off vacationers with water weapons. The stunt could have been playful, however the frustration was actual as residents handled a housing disaster, overcrowding, and the touristification of historic neighbourhoods, native retailers changed by memento shops and picture-perfect brunch cafés designed for social media.

AI builders declare their know-how can clear up overtourism by catering to the person. In latest years, Open AI and Chat GPT have been partnering with journey giants like Booking.com and Expedia, promising extra environment friendly planning instruments and journey personalization. Instead of viral reels funnelling throngs of vacationers to the identical lookout level alongside the cliffs of Santorini, AI vows to search out much less crowded alternate options, in concept assuaging stress from these congested locations. But the brand new applied sciences are removed from excellent. A 2025 BBC article reported two vacationers had been intercepted by an skilled information as they ready to trek by the Peruvian mountains searching for the “Sacred Canyon of Humantay,” a hallucination present solely within the neural community of an AI bot. Mistakes corresponding to this are usually not solely pricey and irritating however will be lethal for travellers setting off on out of doors adventures with incorrect data. A 2026 Forbes article cited a latest study by journey insurance coverage firm, InpositiveMyJourney, which discovered AI fashions might ship professional-looking itineraries, however on nearer inspection had been usually flawed with inaccurate pricing, inefficient journey instructions, and even imaginary eating places with made-up opinions.

Over time, the know-how will possible enhance, however fashions will nonetheless draw their data from our algorithmic echo chambers. Are we served by regularly being fed extra of what we already take pleasure in? Or does that form of affect insulate us from true soul-searching and progress? Isn’t journey the final word car for discovery, one of the best ways to flee our lives and ingrained biases, and broaden our minds past the bounds of our creativeness, or the bounds of an AI system constructed on our historical past of clicks? None of this even begins to account for the environmental influence of knowledge centres. Isn’t it a bit ironic to make use of one more extractive know-how as a instrument for exploring all the wonder and cultural variety the world has to supply?

I not too long ago revealed a novel a couple of group of expatriates in Japan, an expertise my husband and I lived for a few years premarriage throughout the early aughts. The analysis I did primed my algorithm for Japanese journey content material. For months, my feed was bombarded with tempting actions: a monorail trip by a mountain village in Nara; a fascinating cat island in Tashirojima; the must-try viral cream-stuffed sandwiches from Tokyo. Truth be informed, I needed to do all these items. The algorithm had my quantity. Taking in these reels, I used to be hit with each nostalgia and remorse. We lived in Japan for 2 years, however we missed out on a lot.

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One evening, I informed my husband we should always have searched out extra distinctive meals once we had been in Japan. I expressed dismay that we had been in Nara, however by no means rode the monorail. But later, I remembered the true influence of my time in Japan and the expertise had nothing to do with vacationer traps or must-sees. I used to be 23 once I moved to Okayama. Two weeks after I landed, the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults modified journey eternally. Those years overseas had been difficult in so some ways I hadn’t anticipated. Nothing was optimized, however as an alternative usually complicated or straight up exhausting. I needed to discover ways to drive on the opposite facet of the highway, the best way to talk with out talking the language, the best way to prepare dinner with new substances, the best way to make mates in a spot the place I didn’t know anybody. There had been additionally stunning experiences just like the day my college students guided me by a tea ceremony, or selecting oranges in a seaside city with my Japanese trainer.

An algorithm would by no means create an itinerary for that life abroad as a result of it could be disorganized, and demanding and unpredictable. The algorithm wouldn’t anticipate how these challenges made me extra resilient and instilled in me appreciation for an additional tradition. Algorithms take the straightforward highway, as a result of it’s a lot much less effort to persuade me I need an island filled with cats or a must-try viral cream-stuffed sandwich. If we select to make use of these instruments, we should always keep in mind their limitations and make room in our journey for the surprising. Even I couldn’t predict that the unplanned moments in a visit had been going to be a very powerful moments of my life.