Ask HN: Would you trust an algorithm to make travel reservations for you? - garyfirestorm
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mlthoughts2018
I would probably have very little use for such a service unless I was in a
situation with highly frequent and regular travel patterns, such as long-
distance relationship commuting or business travel — enough to make scheduling
a rote chore with rare customization beyond choosing a departure time or
checking if a train is cheaper than a plane.

For less frequent, bespoke travel like vacations or holidays, algorithmic
assistance would be overkill and get in the way. Plus I would not necessarily
want a third-party service aggregating that data about me (and selling it or
driving ads with it, of course).

It’s very similar with automated calendar assistants, which I am generally
skeptical of. Even if they work with human level accuracy, the times when the
slightly lessened cognitive load of offloading to the assistant is better than
just dealing with scheduling are too rare.

And if you’re in a high-powered business situation where scheduling is a huge
volume of chatter for you, you probably already could afford to pay a human
assistant to do it and cost savings to switch to a digital assistant would be
round off error.

It’s why the calendar app companies market the products to everyone — as if
every employee in a company needs a C-level executive treatment for calendar
items — because the only way there is any money in it is to sell big
enterprise licenses cover a lot of headcount, yet this is inherently
antithetical to the product. Big headcount of staff, almost by definition,
don’t spend appreciable time with calendar overhead. (Or else your business is
in trouble.)

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garyfirestorm
Say you want to visit Denver. But you're not from Denver and know nothing
about hidden treasures in and around the city. I'd make a list for you 1\. See
this spot in the city 2\. Drive to this waterfall in the Rockies 3\. Stay at
this place with amazing view 4\. Do these trails in the rockies 5\. Check out
this lake 6\. Drive back to Denver 7\. Catch this flight

This would be one option I could populate other options. You could create
these options for yourself and others. Ability to crowdsource itineraries.

No need to sell your data or show ads. I could make money by taking a dollar
here or there when booking your flights or hotel.

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garyfirestorm
I'm thinking about building an app that takes a users origin and destination
[Detroit to Denver] and dates [13 through 19 June] Based on this data, I wish
to build an itinerary for users, places that can be explored, based on those
places recommended hotels, flights and rentals can be automatically booked.
This is a complex idea. I'm wondering if users would trust an app to make all
the decisions for them.

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panchtatvam
If it is a recurring itinerary, then yes. Else I want to make my own
decisions. I don't like AI.

