Perplexity enters the travel game

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Perplexity’s new travel search experience blends curated content, itinerary planning, and a glimpse into the future of real-time trip management

May 21, 2025

Perplexity, a rising player in the generative AI space, is doubling down on travel with a newly launched tailored search experience designed to offer curated destination content, travel inspiration, and intelligent itinerary suggestions. As part of its broader ambition to become a go-to “answer engine,” Perplexity’s foray into travel signals a step toward agentic AI assistants capable not only of planning trips but potentially managing them in real-time.

Key takeaways

Travel-focused search interface: Since March 2025, Perplexity offers users the option to search specifically for travel, finance, or shopping, with travel searches highlighting Trending Destinations and Inspiration Cards curated by “perplexitytravel.”
Curated, AI-assisted content: Travel inspiration content like “Forest hotels in Sweden for Solitude” is assumed to be auto-generated then human-edited, following a process similar to its Sponsored Questions feature.
Hotel recommendations with practical details: When prompted, Perplexity can provide hotel suggestions, including summarized reviews, website links, directions, and phone numbers, though not direct booking links (yet).
Monetization through sponsored questions: Perplexity introduced Sponsored Questions in 2024, allowing brands to promote content via prompts that appear on the homepage—an innovative ad model not used by OpenAI or others.
Towards agentic travel AI: This expansion into travel lays the groundwork for future real-time travel assistants capable of not just generating itineraries, but eventually managing and adapting them live in response to travel disruptions.
Positioning against major LLMs: With this move, Perplexity further differentiates itself from ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok by offering search experiences deeply integrated with commercial utility and real-world decision support.

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