How to plan a trip without a travel agent in 2026

You don’t need a travel agent to plan a good trip in 2026. You do still need the four jobs one used to do for you, and AI can now take most of the legwork out of each. The trick is knowing which parts an AI looks up, which parts it only remembers, and which two decisions you never hand over.

What a travel agent actually did for you

A good agent across the desk did four things. They knew the place, they checked the details, they booked and held things, and they picked up the phone when it went wrong. Most trips people plan themselves don’t fail on the first job. Ideas are easy. They fail on the second, on a Monday when the museum is shut or a last day that ends at the airport two hours too late.

Here is who does each job now, and what stays yours.

The rest of this guide is those four jobs in the order you’ll do them.

Step 1: Write a brief, not a wish

An AI answers the question you ask. “Somewhere warm in March” gets you a list of beaches. A brief gets you a trip, and it is the same thing you would have told an agent in the first five minutes.

The flight times are the line people leave out, and they matter most. The first and last days are where plans break: a timed ticket at 10:00 on the morning you land, or a long lunch across town two hours before your flight.

Step 2: Have it planned, not just written

There are two very different things an AI can do with your brief. A plain chatbot writes from memory. It predicts what a good itinerary sounds like, which is why the result reads so well. An agent does something else: it calls tools. It asks a maps service how long the walk is, reads a venue’s listing for its hours on that weekday, and checks the calendar for public holidays.

The gap shows up when someone checks the work.

The quickest test is to ask about one stop. “Is the tile museum open on the day you’ve put it?” An answer with that weekday’s hours from a real listing was looked up. An answer that says “typically” or “usually” is a guess, however confident it sounds.

You also no longer have to choose between the assistant you like and a planner that checks. ChatGPT, Claude and Grok all accept connectors now: plug-ins that let the assistant call a specialist tool mid-conversation. LezPlanIt is one of them. Add it once and your assistant keeps the conversation while the plan underneath is built from real lookups (how to connect it).

The same thing happens on a smaller scale in every unchecked plan: a café that closed last year, a viewpoint that’s a 40-minute climb from the stop before it. Neither is a disaster on its own. Three of them in one day is how a holiday turns into logistics.

Step 3: Read the plan the way an agent would check it

Even a well-checked draft deserves one read before you book anything. It takes about ten minutes, and you’re the only one who knows that your partner won’t do two museums in a row. Go day by day and ask five questions.

If a stop fails a question, don’t just delete it. Ask for a swap that fits the day, open at that hour and near the stops either side. That’s a job agents are genuinely good at.

Step 4: Book in the right order, with your finger on the button

Book in the order that prices and availability move. Flights first, because fares change the most. Then beds, one for each base in the plan. Then the timed tickets that sell out weeks ahead, like the Alhambra in Granada or the Last Supper in Milan. Restaurants come last, and only the ones that need it.

AI can now do more of this than it could a year ago. Since 27 Aug, Google’s AI Mode lets people in the US find and book hotels in the chat with partners such as Marriott, Hilton and Expedia; you continue on Google, choose the room and pay with Google Pay, and the hotel or booking site handles the booking. Expedia and Booking.com have apps inside ChatGPT that search live prices. These are useful. Let them search, compare and shortlist.

Two things stay with you. Read the cancellation terms yourself, because “free cancellation” often ends days before arrival. And press pay yourself, once you’ve seen the dates, the names and the total in your own currency.

Step 5: Sort the paperwork early

Paperwork is the part a human agent quietly caught for you, and it’s the part that can stop you at the airport. Check three things as soon as the flights are booked: whether you need a visa or an online travel permit, how long your passport has left, and what your insurance actually covers.

Entry rules depend on the passport you hold, not where you live, so check for each person travelling. LezPlanIt builds a checklist per passport for each trip, which is handy when two of you hold different ones.

Step 6: Take the plan with you, not a screenshot

A plan only earns its keep on the day. Make sure it’s on your phone and readable with no signal, because the metro and the old town are where it drops out. Know when you need to leave for the next stop, not just when it starts. And log what you spend as you go, in your own currency, so the budget is a number and not a feeling.

When something does go wrong, and on a week-long trip something will, the fix is the same as in step 3. Ask for something open now, close to where you’re standing, that fits what’s left of the day.

What an agent still can’t do for you

Honesty matters here, because some trips still deserve a person. If a strike cancels your flight at 2 am, a human agent with airline access can rebook you while you sleep; your AI can tell you your options, but it can’t stand at the desk for you. Complicated multi-country routes, big group trips and weddings abroad are still easier with someone whose job it is. And in the UK and EU, a package holiday comes with legal protections that a trip you put together yourself may not.

For most city breaks, beach weeks and road trips, though, the method above does the job. Brief it well, let something that looks things up do the drafting, read it once, book it yourself, and take it with you.

Questions people ask