ChatGPT is a good trip planner for the thinking part: turning "four days in Lisbon, I like food and walking, not museums" into a sensible plan. It is a poor trip planner for the facts: what a flight costs this month, whether that tasca still exists, and where all of it is on a map. This guide covers both halves: the prompts I use, the mistakes to watch for, and how to give the chat real data with a free connector we built at GeoTok.
Everything here works the same way in Claude.
The short answer
- Give ChatGPT your constraints, not just a destination: dates or month, budget, who is going, pace, and what you want to skip.
- Ask for a day-by-day plan grouped by neighbourhood, so you are not crossing the city three times a day.
- Do not trust prices, opening hours or restaurant names from the plain chat. Check them, or connect a tool that looks them up.
- Get the plan out of the chat. Otherwise it is lost in your history by the time you land.
Steps 3 and 4 are where most AI trip plans fall apart, and they are what the GeoTok Trips connector fixes.
Prompts that work
The more context you give, the less generic the answer. A template I reuse:
Plan 3 days in Lisbon in early December for two people. Budget around €150 a day each, excluding flights. We like long lunches, viewpoints and walking; we do not want museums or day tours. Group each day by neighbourhood, keep walking under 10 km a day, and give one lunch and one dinner per day with the dish to order.
A few follow-ups that improve the first draft:
- "Move anything that needs booking to the top of each day and tell me how far ahead to book."
- "Swap day 2 for a rainy-day version."
- "Which of these places are tourist traps? Replace them with places locals actually go."
- "Put it in a table: day, time, place, area, why."
For a budget trip where you have not picked a city yet:
I have €500 for 3 nights in December, flying from Madrid. Anywhere is fine. Which destinations leave the most money for the hotel?
The plain chat will answer this one with confident-sounding but invented fares. With a connector it uses recently seen prices instead (more on that below).
Where plain ChatGPT goes wrong
Without tools, the plain chat tends to fail in the same ways:
- Flight prices are guesses. It gives typical ranges from its training data, not what is on sale now.
- Restaurants drift. Some are closed, some moved, and a few never existed. It also leans on the same famous names every listicle repeats.
- No booking path. You get names, then have to search every one again.
- The plan stays in the chat. There is no map, no list on your phone, and nothing reminds you when you are walking past the bakery you meant to try.
ChatGPT's own web search helps with the first two, but you still end up with a wall of text and no map.
Give the chat real data: the GeoTok Trips connector
GeoTok Trips is a free connector (an MCP server) that adds travel tools to ChatGPT, Claude and other assistants. You keep chatting the way you already do; the assistant calls the tools when it needs facts.
What it adds:
| Tool | What you can ask | What comes back |
|---|---|---|
| plan_trip | "Plan 3 days in Lisbon with good food" | Hotels, sights and food spots with coordinates for a day-by-day plan |
| find_food_spots | "Where should I eat in Barcelona?" | Restaurants saved from real TikTok, Instagram and YouTube food videos, with the dish to order |
| search_flights | "Cheapest flights from Madrid, any date" | Recently seen fares and links to compare them; works without a date or even a destination |
| find_trips_on_budget | "€500 from Madrid, anywhere" | Destinations, the fare, money left per night for a hotel, and how many GeoTok food spots each place has |
| search_hotels | "Boutique hotel near Alfama" | Hotels with addresses and booking links for your dates |
| search_transfers | "Lisbon airport to my hotel" | Distance, transit and driving directions, pre-book links |
| find_things_to_do | "Viewpoints and markets in Porto" | Sights and links for tours and tickets |
| save_trip_to_geotok | "Save this trip" | A shareable trip page, and the places on your GeoTok map |
The food tool is the part I care about most. Instead of the same ten names from every "best restaurants" article, it returns places real people saved from food videos, checked against the map, with what the creator ordered. Asking for Barcelona, for example, returns spots like Quimet & Quimet (tinned fish), Dolceria de la Colmena (ensaimada, coca de llardons) and Trafalgar Pizza Club, not just a list of famous tapas bars.
How to add it
The connector URL is https://geotok.co/mcp. It needs no account, sign-in or API key.
In Claude: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector. Name it GeoTok Trips, paste the URL, leave the OAuth fields empty. Then ask: "Plan 3 days in Lisbon with good food."
In ChatGPT: Settings → Apps & Connectors → Advanced → turn on Developer mode. Back in Apps & Connectors, choose Create, paste the URL and set authentication to No authentication. In a new chat, pick GeoTok Trips from the tools menu and ask for a trip.
Full setup notes are on the GeoTok Trips page.
Get the plan out of the chat
When the plan looks right, say "save this trip to GeoTok". The assistant returns a link to a trip page you can share with whoever is coming. Open it on your iPhone with the GeoTok app and every place lands on your map, and the app reminds you when you are near one of them. That last part matters more than it sounds: half the places in any trip plan get forgotten because nobody looks at the plan again once they are there.
The connector itself is free. The GeoTok iPhone app that holds the map and the reminders is a paid app.
On iPhone
Keep your restaurant ideas in GeoTok.
Save places from food videos and screenshots, then find them on your map when you want to go.
GeoTok Plus subscription required. Some guides are sold separately.
What it does not do
To be clear about the limits:
- Fares are recently seen prices, not live quotes. They show what others found in the last few days. Always confirm on the booking site before you pay.
- No hotel prices. You get hotels and booking links; the price is on the booking site.
- Food coverage is uneven. It is strongest in cities with lots of food videos (Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, London, New York, Edinburgh) and thin in smaller places.
- Some booking links are affiliate links. GeoTok may earn a commission at no cost to you.
If you want to try the budget search right away, see the cheapest places to fly from London this December, which was built with the same tool.
FAQ
Can ChatGPT plan a whole trip?
It can draft a solid day-by-day itinerary from a good prompt. On its own it cannot reliably check current flight prices or whether a restaurant is still open, so connect a travel tool or check each place before you book.
Is there a free trip planner connector for ChatGPT and Claude?
Yes. GeoTok Trips is a free connector at https://geotok.co/mcp. It needs no sign-in or API key and adds flights, hotels, transfers, things to do, food spots from real food videos, budget trip search and saving the trip to a map.
How do I get a ChatGPT itinerary onto a map?
Without a connector you have to copy each place into a maps app by hand. With GeoTok Trips connected, ask the chat to save the trip: it returns a shareable link, and opening it on an iPhone with the GeoTok app puts every place on your map with reminders when you are nearby.
Does it work with Claude too?
Yes. The connector uses the open Model Context Protocol, so it works in Claude, ChatGPT (developer mode) and other MCP clients with the same URL.