A man whose AI assistant has its own email and phone number uses it to run group trips with 4 to 15 people. It splits bills, gathers everyone's Venmo details, and runs signups for activities like horseback riding, so the organising work comes off his plate.
A presenter showed his AI 'Finch' planning a full Santorini trip for Oct 12–19 for him and his wife while his phone was face-down — returning flights, hotel, and rental car at a best-value total of $6,695, with AI asking for approval before booking.
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.
Type-B traveler Chelsea used her AI 'Sir Wiggles' (penguin avatar) to scan hundreds of saved Instagram posts, extract everything saved from Sardinia, and generate an itinerary — converting scattered saved content into a trip plan for the Sardinia leg of a month-long Italy trip.
A man used AI to plan a weekend trip to Vegas with elderly family, shortlisting dining and events around dietary restrictions. The AI also built a web app dashboard for the trip and handled the payment splitting: he told it what each person spent for the group, it kept running totals split three ways, and when a Venmo email arrived saying someone had sent money, it updated the balance sheet by itself.
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.
Jared Lee was flying to New Bern, North Carolina, where his father may be dying, when delays at lunch told him he would miss his connection. His rental car was booked for New Bern airport. From the taco restaurant, he asked the AI to change the rental to a Charlotte pickup for the 4.5-hour drive. A couple of text messages later it was done: new rental, new confirmation. He estimates it saved him at least an hour of hold time, spent instead present with his wife.
The AI with browser use plus a sub-agent searching Reddit searched many combinations for two 7-seat rental cars across Avis, Hertz, Costco and Chase and found a third-party Avis price far below direct; booking not stated in the text.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
After SAS cancelled and moved a flight, the user rebooked at extra cost and lost prepaid food. The reimbursement claim sat undone for months until the AI searched the SAS emails and found confirmation that the food fees had already been refunded the same day — no claim needed.
Creator Jen Lehner says in an Oct 19 Facebook reel that Instinct proactively texted her that she had accidentally booked duplicate Southwest Airlines tickets for herself and her daughter out of St. Louis on both Friday and Saturday. She confirmed the booking, it was canceled in time, and she received a full refund saving approximately $1,200.
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.
Ahead of a Nov 14 Disney cruise, he credits the AI with tracking the staggered booking milestones — excursions opening in August, online check-in, and a late-night Royal Gathering character meetup — so none of the windows are missed.
After missing a cinema showing of Lawrence of Arabia, he built a tool that scrapes the listings of most movie theaters in New York to show what is actually playing. He uses it often to plan weekend viewing and has caught 2046, Lawrence of Arabia and plenty of others with it.
His scheduled search looks 8 days to 12 weeks out for same day return flights from Stansted under £30, and checks Eurostar promo fares too. The point is the tobacco run: 200 cigarettes cost him about £150 at home and about £50 abroad, and he gets a day in a city he would not normally visit out of it.
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.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Jorden Tually (verified, 520K followers), answering a comment about visiting every country, explained he's been to 104 of 197 countries over 12 years and asked the AI for a realistic timeline. The AI interface analyzed his Instagram to determine his travel style, then generated a detailed month-by-month seasonal timeline starting in 2027 and projecting completion in December 2036, with an interactive world map showing visited countries in green and remaining in orange.
Jruss707 tested the AI on a Nov 13–18 Yosemite/Sage Lodge trip: the agent browsed the Sage website and completed the hotel booking using a saved Link payment method, found a Southwest flight from Sacramento using reward points (after the author pointed to a preferred flight), and arranged an AWD/4WD rental car from Bozeman.
Planning a family holiday in Florida, Eric opened a voice call with Jarvis about skydiving availability. By the end they had worked through airport pickup, three jumpers split across two aircraft loads, two boys waiting on the ground, drive time and the rental check-in, and slotted the jump into otherwise dead travel-transition time. When he pushed back on an early Everglades start, the plan moved and the shareable itinerary updated with it.
In Simmons's roundup of other Dots users, one person's Dot read a cancellation email, checked live tracking on an earlier train, found it running late and got its owner onto it. The account is secondhand and brief.
Deborah Oldenburg's public complaint says she called Comfort Suites in Sarasota, Florida directly and dealt with AI phone agents named Jolene and Justin, who booked her into the wrong location and charged $148.49; she stayed at a different Comfort Suites for $117.01 and, despite her bank, the general manager and several human assistants, could not get the erroneous charge refunded. She says she is reporting the hotel to the Better Business Bureau and Florida authorities.
$148.49at stake
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
He asked the AI to write a short email to his hotel asking for a better rate. The front desk called him back and dropped the room from $330 to $240 a night, saving $90 a night, and he says the whole thing took about 30 seconds of his time.
Travel advisor Marissa Waiters reports the AI scanned her email inbox and located 18 free night vouchers, then organized and filed them for easy access — travel value that was effectively lost in the inbox.
Lexie Alford asked the AI to turn 6,000 saved Instagram posts into a mapped Florida bucket-list organizer. Saved-post archaeology turned into a usable travel map — the same pattern as the recipe-PDF case, applied to travel.
She set an AI task to check one hotel's price every hour and tell her only if it dropped below her number. Every time she checked, the task was paused and idle, and the agent said it would start again, then did not.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
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.
Traveling with ADHD usually meant late-night overplanning; for a Dallas trip she delegated to the AI, which planned and curated four days and six events, mapped drive times and timed departures so she could just pack and show up (paid partnership post).
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.
Dave Y. Kim reported spending about 30 seconds on the AI to start a flight-disruption reimbursement that played out over several days and returned $2,000.
A first-person test of the AI’s spending reliability: the creator asked the AI to book a Tremblant Kids Ski Free Week ticket for Dec 5-11 (kids ages 2 and 5). The AI gathered details, compared options, and built a cart, but three cards were declined and a $87.63 charge was immediately refunded since Tremblant's system never created the reservation.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
Tech executive Matthew Simari posts that he asked the AI to add his frequent-flier number to an upcoming trip on a partner airline. The AI located the confirmation number in his email, navigated to the booking, added the number, and confirmed completion with him.
Coach Casey Kenny asked his AI 'Milo' to book a flight for an October 21 keynote in Dallas; Milo returned United options and Kenny selected option 3. The video shows the actual booking interaction for a business trip.
Wendell Yu describes sharing content to the AI while scrolling: places get added to his itinerary and photos of his daughter are filed into an online album automatically.
He plays tennis a lot. He asks the AI which courts are open, picks one, and the AI books it and puts it on his calendar. The same flow works for movie theater showtimes and tickets, and for restaurant reservations anywhere with an online booking page.
Sayer PM had the AI book and pay airport parking with Tesla charging, give fall-break flight advice, and compare Ace vs Lowe's prices straight from a receipt photo.
Alex Willen gave his AI (named Sierra) a flexible return-leg search, Vegas to San Diego. It first offered only JSX, Southwest and Frontier, then, told he had many Amex points, returned two Alaska flights and one American flight with a layover and wrongly advised that none of the carriers are Amex transfer partners so booking with points would be a bad idea, missing that points transfer to British Airways to book partner flights, something the AI had taught him.
This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
When a friend visited Boston, the reviewer had the AI create a shareable dashboard with flights, restaurant reservations, tours booked, etc. It could book an OpenTable reservation and update the trip dashboard including the HTTP link for the accessible restaurant menu, and cancel or modify OpenTable reservations — all through WhatsApp messages.
A Deaf creator recounts waking up after missing an early-morning Air Canada flight and asking the AI to find a cheaper replacement. The AI accessed his Air Canada account, confirmed his Flex ticket could be changed, searched other airlines' prices in parallel, and supplied the airline phone number he could not find; he called via Canada VRS, found Air Canada's own rebooking cheapest, and paid — about 30 minutes total versus an estimated one to two stressful hours alone.
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.'
X user someone had the AI file a compensation claim after a seven-hour flight delay. The agent secured a $250 airline credit and handled the rebooked flight itinerary completely on its own, with no manual steps from the user.
A reviewer coordinating a group trip to Cape May asked the AI to email a friend about the trip, then turn the friend's restaurant picks into a shared Google Doc with alternatives. The AI handled both the outreach and the document creation in one flow.
The same man's system pulls every train, flight, hotel and ferry booking out of his email into one travel database. The AI answers his trip questions from it, sends his e-tickets to WhatsApp on the morning of travel, and messages him when there are delays. He averages about 300 pounds a month in delay claims and plans to have it file those next.
On one voice call, Eric and Jarvis planned a family holiday day in Florida: skydiving availability, airport pickup, three jumpers split across two aircraft loads, two boys waiting on the ground, drive time and rental check-in. They fit the jump into otherwise dead travel-transition time, and the shareable itinerary updated live as Eric revised details aloud, including moving the Everglades leg later.
A user lists jobs he handed to the AI, including a delayed flight: he says the AI successfully processed his compensation claim with Delta Air Lines and the money came through. Other jobs in the same post (a Bell Mobility bill dispute, a crypto trading bot) he reports doing himself or failing, and are not recorded here.
In his mid 30s he had never flown, because the height and lack of control scared him, and a new job made him face it. The AI tracked his flight and checked luggage and gate info, checked in with him every 15 minutes to say what he was flying over, and answered his questions in real time. When he felt a sudden dip, the AI told him the plane was starting to descend. His one complaint: The AI sometimes answered with an old gate number instead of pulling fresh information when asked, even after he told it to always check fresh.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.