Building an AI Travel Assistant: Lessons from Real-World Challenges

Author(s): Prisca Ekhaeyemhe

Originally published on Towards AI.

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Imagine planning a trip and needing instant flight updates — best prices, shortest layovers, and real-time availability — all in one chat. That’s exactly what I set out to build: an AI-powered travel assistant.

You’ve probably heard the saying: AI won’t replace you, but the person using AI will. While AI can generate code, understanding the fundamentals is still crucial. The best way to learn? Get your hands dirty.

As I developed this chatbot using OpenAI’s API, I ran into several unexpected challenges. Here are three major roadblocks I faced and the solutions I discovered along the way.

ChatGPT’s web interface has a browsing feature, but this capability isn’t available when calling OpenAI’s API directly. This meant my assistant couldn’t fetch live flight data on its own — I needed an external API.

To retrieve real-time flight details, I used SerpAPI, which returns all necessary information (prices, routes, layovers, airlines) in a single call. However, if a user first asks for price and then later asks for flight routes, calling the API again would be wasteful.

🔹 Challenge: How do I store and reuse the API response so that my chatbot… Read the full blog for free on Medium.

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Published via Towards AI