AI travel planner & itinerary generator

Rarely do I get up to find that the nonsense I wrote from waking up with a cool dream actually is a good idea - or even makes sense. This time it was different.

I had booked a trip to New York with some friends in early 2023, and I had been thinking about it a lot apparently because I had a dream about it. In the dream, I asked one of my friends what we even had planned for the trip. To my surprise, my friend pulled out his phone and showed me in a matter-of-fact manner and said something to the effect of, "We just use this AI itinerary app, duh".

It wasn't some crazy novel idea - but ChatGPT had come out with a huge bang not long before this, and it must have been in the back of my mind. I had to pinch myself after waking up with this idea because - what? An idea that came to me in a dream was an actually viable idea? Insanity.

So I immediately contacted my co-founders/friends. We were/are still working on our chore app, Chap, but this new idea sparked a new motivation that we had somewhat lost after 2 years with Chap. Chap was also a good idea, but one can only stay excited about an app for chores for so long.

We got started. We had a lot of... let's call them "learning moments" from our development of Chap. We used this experience to our advantage for this new app (eventually naming it Orbt - pronounced "orbit"). One of our biggest mistakes with Chap was getting so excited that we would just start on things. With Orbt, we slowed things down and made sure things were discussed and written down before starting.

This is what we landed on for our MVP: focusing on AI-generated itineraries and a "discover" page with articles (ironically most are written by me, not AI) that will eventually be a community-driven area for people to share travel ideas as well as "official" articles from us. We plan to have MUCH more, such as integrating flights/hotels, more local guidance, etc., but for the MVP, this is what we decided on.

And finally, after nearly 4 months of hard work - we've finally launched on the App/Play Stores! Hope you all find it as exciting and useful as we have.

Thanks,

Paul