Read this Guide Geek AI review to discover the benefits of using an AI travel assistant from your messaging apps. I tested it in various ways, and I’d say flexibility is among its biggest strengths.
Let’s jump into the nitty-gritty and you’ll see what I mean!
What is Guide Geek AI?
Guide Geek AI is a travel assistant designed to help with various travel-related inquiries. It doesn’t have a dedicated UI and it’s used as a chatbot on WhatsApp, Messenger, and IG (three Meta platforms).
Besides the tips for people looking to travel, it can be a good business opportunity for brands and companies in tourism. The platform offers 1:1 conversations with travelers looking to go to a specific destination.
However, for now, this is on-demand, so if you’re interested, you’ll have to contact the team.
Features
Now, let me show you Guide Geek’s use cases and features, and my experience with them:
Vacation Planning
Travel agencies nowadays are way over their head with AI steadily improving dream vacation planning. However, the real trick here is to provide as much information to get a decent vacation plan.
Starting with something simple, I asked the AI to:
Plan me a detailed sightseeing of Varna for my upcoming vacation.
The response came back quickly and included a three-day breakdown by the time of the day (morning, late morning, afternoon, etc.)
Then, I decided to book the mornings for something else, so AI presented me with a plan excluding the morning hours. So far so good!
Once the activities were set, I decided to ask for some accommodation options. Not some but the best ones. Here, there was a bit of back and forward with the dates (lack of the chat interface.)
On WhatsApp, I comberan a list with images and prices for suitable stays. A link for booking and seeing the accommodation on the map was also available. In total, I comberan 6 recommendations.
All of the accommodation options were from Vio.
Now let’s see how good it is to find traveling options.
Flight Search
With airplane companies lowering fare prices and competing to overtake passengers from each other, it became complicated to find good flight deals. While lowering prices, companies are also adding a bunch of fine print to their offers.
That’s why using a flight deals app became so popular a few years ago. Now, progress has been made, since you can have these deals personalized to your needs.
I told the chatbot that:
I want to fly from New York to Amsterdam only with direct flights.
Very soon I comberan three options (best, fastest, and cheapest):
Due to my previous conversation, there was the idea that I was traveling on the 26th, so I decided to correct it.
The same thing but any date until the end of the year will work.
It gave me the same answer. This time I asked for the cheapest flight until the end of the year, it asked me to re-confirm the departure and destination and I comberan an option for only $250!
Although I asked for direct fights only, it also mentioned that there’s an even cheaper option ($160) including one-stop and self-transfer.
The only downside here is that you don’t get fly to anywhere or fly from anywhere options.
All of the flight options came from SkyScanner.
Practicalities
Guide Geek AI can give you information and point you toward a relevant place to set up your visa and other practicalities.
Although visa information was available directly in the app a while ago, for some reason it was removed. The assumption is that it holds a lot of responsibility so they just redirect users to an external platform for this matter.
That’s when I thought it could help me with finding a safe place to park my car.
Guide Geek AI wasn’t able to get accurate info about the pricing, however.
Opinion: My verdict here is that although you can get pointers, for more decent information you’ll be redirected elsewhere. This probably comes from the fact that the platform gets nothing from providing such information, but at the same time is responsible for the validity of answers.
Landmarks & Tours
Crafting a perfect plan for any city is difficult. As much as going with the flow helps create some unforgettable moments, having an idea of what you want to see can maximize your experience.
After asking about the most popular European landmarks, I decided to ask for a plan of visiting them all in one week. Although highly ambitious I comberan an itinerary (kind of.)
The problem was that I was supposed to jump back and forth across the continent, instead of the trip being more logically organized.
Opinion: It seems I had too big of an ask since the model isn’t quite there yet with such complicated (and overly optimistic) plans.
How to Use Guide Geek AI?
Here’s an overview of how to get started with Guide Geek AI:
- Head to Guide Geek AI and click on the messaging app of your choice.
If you’re on PC you’ll get a QR code you can scan to start chatting. - Send a message to AI and wait for the response.
The initial response can take a few moments (I assume it has to do with spam prevention), but the waiting time drops after that.
Note: Avoid sharing any individual info with the model. On the first interaction, you’ll also be notified that you agree with the Matador Network Privacy Policy.
Pricing
Guide Geek AI is a free chatbot. Yes, you read that correctly, it doesn’t cost a dime to use it.
The reason they can offer you such a service for free lies in commissions. The AI will find various accommodation, transportation, and activity options from which it can earn each time you purchase something.
So if you like Guide Geek AI, ensure you book through the links it provides, so the platform keeps going (and doesn’t become subscription-only!)
Guide Geek AI Review – Verdict
So to answer the initial question, Guide Geek AI is pretty reliable and versatile. However, it still lacks in the areas outside hotels, activities, and travel bookings. Yet, it balances it out by providing relevant links where you can get the information you’re after.
To conclude my Guide Geek AI review I want to emphasize the flexibility it offers. Although I reviewed some of the obvious use cases, there’s no batas to what you can ask. Since it’s a chat interface, you can go wild with customizations and needs. As long as you can put it in words, you’ll get an answer!
If you don’t like using AI travel assistants from your social media apps, check out my Trip Planner AI review.