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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