by Vas Mylko, Roman Bilusiak
Hey curious travelers! Today we are releasing Curiosio Supertrip. It’s v20 of Curiosio. You can find a travel story you like and convert it into the trip you want. Each trip plan comes with a route, itinerary, and daily guides on what to See and what to Do.
The magical red [Supertrip] button in web search results is now functional. Hit it to start planning your own trip to visit the points and places mentioned in the original travel story. You are building up on top of the trips you like. We coined the name Supertrip for such trip creation.
Genesis
It started back in 2021 when Andrii Maistruk, a student of the Ukrainian Catholic University, Department of Computer Sciences, approached Vas Mylko for a cool problem for his thesis. He got it — automatic recognition of points and places from travel magazines. Here is how Vas described the problem statement back then:
Andrii made it — Geographical Named Entity Recognition from Travel Articles. Then, we [at Curiosio] have made a zillion times more. And finally built a useful tool for travel inspiration and practical trip planning. Now you indeed can follow your curiosity — find what interests you, and elaborate how deep the rabbit hole goes — all that at https://curiosio.com.
This effort was ambitious, it was kicked off well before ChatGPT changed the world. Curiosio is helping you travel & experience more of the world. A lot more could be unlocked from all those travel stories from the web with the newest LLMs and a big cheque.
We manifested how we would implement Supertrips back in November 2022. Check it out — Design of Supertrips — we did the full scope. Let us describe how you could do Supertrip right away for your leisure travels and travel planning. There are several use cases below, each of them showcasing something new.
Supertripping Tuscany
I’m a Londoner. I thoroughly enjoyed reading National Geographic about Tuscan journeys. The story about Tuscany’s Breathtaking Countryside was particularly captivating for me. I’m planning a trip to Italy on top of that story. Setting my own duration and budget. Expecting the maximum overlap with the original route and scope.
I am opening Curious Italy, scrolling to the Find section, typing breathtaking Tuscany, and found my favorite Natgeo article in 1 second as a top hit. Clicking it, get two options: Go to the article or [Plan a Road Trip]. Go to the article opens the Natgeo website in a new tab with that article. [Plan a Road Trip] will automatically fill the Create Trip form for you with the points & places from the article.
Curiosio picked up all points and places from the article so I don’t have to enter them manually. I’m leaving all other fields empty [by default] to explore my options. I am hitting the red [GET TRIP] button and getting 7 trip plans in 47 seconds.
I’m briefly reviewing them by scrolling, then opening one trip plan for details — it’s a 5-day loop from Buonconvento. Curiosio included all requested points [as in the original article] and added more — such as San Quirico d’Orcia for the iconic landscape with Chapel of Madonna di Vitaleta and its vicinity. The itinerary is present below the map with a route.
Supertripping Utah Canyons
Let’s plan a road trip in the United States. First off, go to the Curious U.S. page. Then, scroll down to the Find section. Typing deep red canyons. The top web link looks very promising, clicking it for review, and digging in for details. Hitting [Plan a Road Trip] to get the Create trip form automatically filled with the points & places from the Thrillist article.
I’m leaving duration and budget empty [default] but specifying 4 travelers because I know it’s going to be 4 of us. Also, I’m selecting the Rental Car option because we will fly in and pick the car. Curiosio created 7 trip plans in 50 seconds. Here is the 11-day trip for 4, with all requested points & places included, and more added on top — the Monument Valley in Arizona.
Supertripping Amsterdam Environs
Let’s do one more case in the Netherlands. I like the article about the many daily trips from Amsterdam. I want to visit the points & places around Amsterdam mentioned in all those weekend breakouts. I know we have only 4 days, there are 2 of us. So I am relying on Curiosio to gather all ingredients [from the original article], make a geo soup, and boil me candidate trip plans in those requirements.
Curiosio proposed to start off in Rotterdam. I’m editing the starting point to make it Amsterdam. Also, I’m explicitly defining the dates (for the duration and booking dates) and the number of travelers.
Curiosio produced 7 trip plans in 27 seconds. Here are some of them: trip plan1, trip plan2, trip plan3, trip plan4. All of them include the requested 27 points & places. All of them fit in 4 days. All show the budget for 2. All plans have routes, itineraries, time breakdowns, and cost breakdowns. Below is one of them in the extended view.
It’s possible to take anyone and start building up on top of it — just hit the [Supertrip] button. The Create form will be pre-filled for you. Continue searching and researching until you get what you want. Continue learning what’s possible in your requirements.
Wolfram for Travel
ChatGPT gets its computation superpowers from Wolfram. “ChatGPT can now call on Wolfram|Alpha — and Wolfram Language as well — to give it computational superpowers. It’s still very early days for all of this, but it’s already very impressive — and one can begin to see how amazingly powerful what we can call ChatGPT + Wolfram can be.”
Curiosio|Ingeenee is a Wolfram|Alpha for TravelTech.
Sketching a Trip in natural language is becoming possible now. ChatGPT is cracking the language, and Curiosio is creating trip plans. ChatGPT is great for capturing a context from plain text and from text chat. Ingeenee [our AI engine] is great for computing personal trip plans in a unique context. Text chat could be extended to voice chat then. It means you are sketching a trip in simple English.
We are going to describe some tech details about Text-to-Trip, Chat-to-Trip, Voice-to-Trip, also Trip Markup Language, and Semantic Trip Data Format in the next post planned as Supertrip Technical, so stay tuned.
Google for Travel
Curiosio is a Web Search Engine. Curiosio has a function of Web Search, for travel articles and guides. You could search directly from Curiosio when you want to find something at National Geographic or Thrillist or tens of other travel magazines and travel blogs. Web search with Curiosio works like simple googling, looks & feels like You.com.
A click on any item gives you an opportunity to go to the original article on the web or do [Supertrip] on top of it. Curiosio Web Index is 100,000+ travel articles as of today. Could be grown to 1,000,000+ if travelers confirm the demand for volume and variety of sources.
We are going to describe interesting technical challenges that we solved and some that we have to overcome in a separate blog post code named Supertrip Technical. Benchmarking against Google, Bing, You.com could be included. Thus, stay tuned.
Next
The next curious countries in the pipeline are Spain, Japan, and Greece. All three are top-notch. All of them will work on top of Curiosio v20 — with Web Search and with Supertrips. Stay tuned, and always follow your curiosity.
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