Places.ai

Places.ai - Your friendly AI travel companion that plans trips as easily as you dream them.

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Inspiration

Our team has always loved travelling, but we've also often felt the frustration that comes with planning trips: endless tabs, messy notes, conflicting schedules, and reading way too many blogs titled "best things to do in..." What should be an exciting journey often turns into hours of tedious coordination and indecision (Powered by Gemini and guided by our mascot, Placie 👻✨).

With the release of Google Gemini, we saw a change to reimagine trip planning. We wanted to build something that felt conversational, intelligent, and actually fun to use. A tool that understands your preferences and creates personalized itineraries in seconds. The idea turned into Places.ai, your friendly AI travel companion.

What it does

Places.ai is an AI-powered trip planner that instantly generates complete, personalized itineraries. Users can describe their destination, dates, interests, and Gemini creates a structured day-by-day plan - including attractions, dining, and scheduling.

With the conversational chatbot, travellers can modify their trips in natural language: “Add a museum in the morning,” or “Move dinner later.” The app handles all the logistics behind the scenes, so users can focus on enjoying their adventures.

How we built it

  • Frontend: Next.js 14 + React 18 with TypeScript and Material-UI for a clean, responsive interface
  • Backend: Supabase for authentication, real-time data, and itinerary storage
  • AI: Google Gemini 2.5 Pro for itinerary generation and conversational editing
  • Maps Integration: Google Maps and Places APIs for real locations and travel times
  • Architecture: RESTful API routes in Next.js, with prompt-templating for structured JSON itineraries

Challenges we ran into

  • Designing AI prompts that produce consistent, structured JSON outputs for the itinerary
  • Handling time, distance, and category context (e.g., not placing breakfast at midnight or dinner in another city)
  • Integrating Gemini’s responses with the frontend map and drag-and-drop editor
  • Ensuring smooth authentication and storage via Supabase

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a fully functional AI travel planner in less than 24 hours
  • Designed a friendly, branded AI assistant (Placie) that makes trip planning feel personal and fun
  • Implemented real-time editing and AI-generated itineraries using Google Gemini
  • Created a beautiful, production-ready UI that blends intelligence with simplicity

What we learned

  • How to engineer effective prompts for consistent structured responses from Gemini
  • How to combine multiple APIs (Gemini, Maps, Supabase) into one seamless user experience
  • How to work as a team on a single repository

What's next for Places.ai

  • Dynamic itinerary updates: Automatically adjust plans for weather changes, delays, or unexpected closures (e.g., swap outdoor hikes for indoor museums on rainy days).
  • Live event suggestions: Integrate event and activity APIs to suggest concerts, festivals, or local events during your travel dates.
  • Online-connected Gemini: Enable Gemini to access real-time data sources (weather, events, maps, transit) for up-to-date, context-aware recommendations.
  • Multi-user collaboration: Allow friends and family to co-edit and coordinate trips together.
  • Social sharing: Let users share and explore itineraries publicly for inspiration.
  • Mobile app: Extend Places.ai to iOS and Android for easy on-the-go access.
  • Smarter personalization: Use feedback and user history to fine-tune future itineraries.
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