During the mid-August Massachusetts tax holiday, the reviewer made 2 Best Buy purchases via the American Airlines mileage shopping portal and did not get the miles. He asked the AI to file missing mileage claims, access the receipt data from Gmail, and save a PDF of the Best Buy email receipts to Google Drive.
The AI assembled a split-ticket itinerary from Karachi to San Francisco priced around $1,209, combining separate tickets that a single search would not surface as one trip.
Vibe-built a Wikipodcast app with a Wikipedia dump, Gemma search and summarization, and TTS; actually used it on a Rhine bike trip to listen to local history.
Threads creator hashtaglima had the AI watch a booked hotel reservation; when the rate dropped, the AI rebooked the exact same hotel, room, and dates at the lower price, saving $179 — and the creator verified the saving with the hotel itself.
The AI found the user a car ferry from Croatia to Italy, avoiding $2,200 in rental drop-off fees, booked and paid for it, pulled the plate and car model from the rental agreement, and confirmed he was insured for the voyage.
After Turkish Airlines refused his delayed-flight refund, a traveler used AI to escalate: it assembled a Turkish-language ombudsman filing with his screenshots and the rule citations, and €900 was refunded. He says he would not have had the cognitive space to do it alone.
Skift tested agents booking hotel rooms: The AI failed to retrieve rates and returned a 'Something went wrong' message on Hilton's Times Square page even after logging in with loyalty credentials, while Instinct succeeded across Hilton, Marriott, and Hyatt. Hilton says it isn't blocking agents — the failures read as technical.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
A first-person account of testing the AI to fully plan and book a spontaneous trip without doing research: an open-ended goal (good food, beautiful stay, minimal effort). The AI compared destinations, flights, and hotels, noticed the author's saved Instagram folder for Mexico City, suggested ways to use points and travel benefits, and organized everything into a bookable plan — presented as Part 1 of a series.
After quitting her job, creator Brittani asked her AI 'Booked & Busy Betty' for a 4-day beach trip under $2,000; Betty returned options including Cancun and cruises, and also helped plan the itinerary, find clothing, and order travel items — with approval required at each step.
A screen recording shows a proactive AI message: TAP Portugal selling Montreal (YUL) to Lisbon roundtrip nonstop for $602 CAD all-in — 34% below typical best prices — noting it pairs with Manchester United's Champions League away game at Sporting CP on Wednesday, Nov 25 at Estádio José Alvalade. A user reply reads 'the AI is my new travel agent.'
Every few days the AI checks for date night ideas for Eleanor Konik: English language opera near her, what is playing at local dinner theaters, and anything unusually cheap, and it emails her when something fits. It found Grease as the very last show in the old building of a dinner theater her husband has wanted to take her to for years, and a Young Frankenstein showing at a dinner theater an hour away she had never heard of, which she went to.
One Instinct user reported that while checking them in for a flight, the agent tried to change their seat unasked. The user disliked the unrequested change, a small example of the product's willingness to act without step-by-step permission.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Chelsea Yamase documented the AI re-planning her Sardinia trip after a rental-car breakdown: re-routing through the mountains, choosing a boutique hotel near a boat launch, and booking restaurants via WhatsApp in Italian. The AI also monitored flights and deliveries and emailed about customs.
Creator Eric Siu had the AI build a 'Japan in Bloom' itinerary for March 27–April 7, 2027 covering Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka, generated from his saved Instagram posts for cherry-blossom season.
Serina had the AI book reservations on non-English websites without relying on translation, using her known dates, accommodation, and Someday shortlists to organize recommendations and complete the bookings.
A traveler planning a trip with AI booked his own flight and hotel, but Dots noticed the shuttle was missing, proposed it with the details they had discussed, and completed the booking form on its cloud computer - after asking him to confirm the same booking three separate times.
Stuck in Manhattan with three hours to fill after a drop-off, Eric planned the afternoon with Jarvis by voice while driving. He gave it a mood instead of a destination — a break from technology, maybe by looking at art about technology — and it weighed a museum, galleries and an observation deck, then came back with a walking route through Chelsea galleries. At the end of the call he told it to put the route in his calendar, and it did.
Engadget reporter Karissa Bell asked the AI to help research a potential multi-city international trip later in the year, giving it timing and a nonstop-flights-only preference. The AI returned flight options from her city, set up a price tracker to monitor costs at regular intervals, suggested how to order the route, and recommended considering a multi-city ticket so she could depart from a different airport than she flew into.
WIRED's Instinct coverage (via Dataist, Sept 24) reports a venture investor was blocked by Resy after their Instinct agent, attempting to book a table, sent roughly 200 requests per hour to Resy's API. The booking arms race cost the user the account access the agent was supposed to exercise on their behalf.
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A couple spent 14 days in Kyoto, Hakone and Tokyo with AI as their travel assistant. Before the trip it grilled him one question at a time instead of handing over a plan, and built a private offline trip page for their phones with day cards, booking codes, train guides and taxi cards showing the hotel address in Japanese. During the trip he ran it from his phone: after they caught a later train he asked for the day to be re-timed and got new times, an updated app and moved calendar events in a couple of minutes. One stop was added without anyone checking it was open, and it was not; after that every stop got checked on the venue's own site first.