Destination Trip Planning

Destination Trip Planning

Plan themed trips to specific attractions or destinations with real pricing, logistics, and a tight itinerary focused on the theme — not a generic city guide.

When to Use

• User wants to plan a trip to a specific attraction, event, or themed destination (e.g., Graceland, a national park, a festival, a resort)
• User asks for "what to do there" at a given destination
• User needs a go/no-go recommendation on trip length and budget
• User wants to know what's nearby that fits the same theme

Core Workflow

Phase 1: Lock the Destination and Constraints

Clarify up front:

• Exact destination — confirm the city/location (Graceland = Memphis, not Nashville)
• Traveler profile — age, mobility, energy level, interests
• Time window — exact check-in and checkout dates, calendar days, and number of nights; if the user corrects the duration, recompute the entire budget
• Traveler and payment structure — total headcount, ages, likely activity participants, and which person/team pays which share
• Budget sense — looking for deals vs. full-service package
• 2–3 day trip vs longer

Phase 1.5: Clarify What "The Attraction" Actually Is

First-time visitors often don't know the attraction's layout. Preempt "is it just a house?" or "the house is the museum, right?" moments by describing the physical campus up front:

• Is the attraction one building or a campus spread across multiple sites?
• What's the ticket actually cover? (e.g., Graceland's $85 Elvis Experience = mansion across the street + 200K sq ft exhibit complex + two airplanes + on-site dining/shopping)
• Are there free areas (gravesite, gates, grounds)?
• Can the traveler see everything without re-entering or is it split across days?

This matters more for older travelers — they need to know if there's significant walking, shuttles, or stairs between components.

Phase 2: Gather Destination Research

For the primary attraction:

• Ticket pricing tiers (standard vs VIP vs all-access)
• How long the full experience takes
• Peak vs off-peak times
• Available discounts (senior, AAA, military, promo codes)
• Parking / shuttle / accessibility info

For on-site hotel (if applicable):

• Lead with the official property name first when the user asks for "the [attraction] hotel" (for Graceland: The Guest House at Graceland)
• Separate the hotel from the attraction clearly: answer whether the hotel is required or merely part of the fuller themed experience. State this explicitly when the user asks some version of "do we have to stay there?"
• Room rates and resort fees
• Package deals bundling tickets + hotel
• Current promos (seasonal savings, flash sales)
• Proximity to the attraction (walkable?)
• Amenities for an easy stay (no need to leave)
• If exact stay-date pricing is not directly retrievable, give the best grounded public price signal you can find, label it as approximate, and do not imply it is a verified date-specific rate
• When useful, frame the decision as experience vs cost efficiency: themed on-site stay vs cheaper off-site hotel vs attraction-only day trip

For travel logistics:

• Distance from user's home city → drive vs fly
• Drive time with realistic traffic
• Nearest airport and transit from airport to attraction
• If driving: split the trip with overnight stops

Phase 3: Build the Themed Itinerary

CRITICAL RULE: When the trip has a theme, every suggestion must serve the theme.

When the user asks "what would she do there" or "anything else related":

• List ONLY attractions, restaurants, and activities related to the theme
• Do NOT mix in generic city recommendations (parks, unrelated museums, shopping districts, tourist attractions)
• If you're not sure, ask "is she also interested in [city] stuff, or just [theme]?"
• Label each recommendation with its thematic connection (e.g., "where Elvis recorded his first song")

For each recommendation, give:

• What it is and why it matters
• How long it takes
• Distance from the hotel / attraction hub
• Walkability for an older traveler

Phase 4: Present the Itinerary

Structure by day:

1. Day 1 — Arrive, settle in, easy evening
2. Day 2 — Main attraction day (full, relaxed pace)
3. Day 3 — Morning theme-option + depart

No "must see everything" pressure. For older travelers, prioritize:

• Short distances between stops
• Seating available
• Minimal walking / stairs
• Easy Uber or shuttle access
• Afternoon rest time

Output Style

• Lead with "here's what she'd actually do" — concrete, not conceptual
• Use tables for pricing comparisons
• Use bullet lists for attraction lineups
• Clearly separate the primary attraction from optional extras
• Before moving from research to pricing, confirm the itinerary with the user
• For unstable group decisions, do not wait for perfect commitment before helping: present a provisional primary-trip budget plus a clearly separated fallback for the smaller subgroup, with assumptions, optional activity add-ons, and the decision deadline that matters for peak inventory
• When the party includes older travelers or children, favor resort-accessible lodging and simple transport over an isolated property, even if the isolated cabin appears cheaper

Pitfalls

• Do not assume the destination city is the attraction city. Graceland = Memphis, not Nashville. Confirm geography early.
• Do not suggest generic city attractions on a themed trip. When someone asks for Elvis stuff, give them Elvis stuff — not Beale Street blues clubs or the Civil Rights Museum unless they ask.
• Travel/attraction websites frequently block webextract and even browsernavigate. They use Cloudflare or JS-heavy rendering. Fallback chain: search-result snippets → press releases on the official site → third-party aggregator articles. For JS-heavy blog-type sites that webextract times out on, try curl -sL -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 ..." to pull raw HTML — the content is often inline despite the SPA shell. Do not keep retrying webextract, and don't re-navigate a Cloudflare-blocked page.
• Do not overbuild. A 70-year-old who wants to see Elvis doesn't need a 12-stop scavenger hunt. 2-3 meaningful things plus Graceland is plenty.
• Duration and payer drift. When the user changes a trip from one number of days/nights to another, recompute flights, lodging, meals, transport, activities, and all subgroup totals. When teams pay separately, do not report only a combined household total.
• Airport handoff pattern: When you suggest an airport and the user asks about a different one, research it quickly and neutrally — don't argue for your original suggestion. After reporting the data (connecting, more expensive), the user may pick the regional option anyway — accept without re-explaining the comparison.
• Confirm each phase before proceeding. User wants to confirm: research findings → itinerary → day count → themed extras → THEN pricing. When they reply with a short affirmative like "y" or "k," that's their signal to move to the next phase. Do not jump ahead.
• Do not bury the practical info under blog-style prose. Give ticket prices, hours, and how-to-book in the first pass.
• When the user asks "anything else [theme]-related?" do NOT re-list what you already told them. Give new specific themed options only. If you already covered them all, say so and offer a themed restaurant, historic site, or offbeat spot — not generic city stuff unless they explicitly ask for it.
• Do not assume the user knows what the ticket price includes. When presenting pricing, add one clear line about what each tier actually covers (e.g., "$85 standard ticket = mansion tour + exhibit complex + airplanes, ~3.5-4 hrs"). This prevents the "the house is the museum right?" confusion.

Verification

Before presenting:

• Primary attraction pricing confirmed from at least one source
• Hotel package deal checked against bundle vs separate pricing
• Themed attractions only — no generic city filler
• Realistic pace for the traveler's profile

Total Trip Estimate

After pricing is finalized, deliver a one-table budget estimate:

| Category | Estimated Cost | |----------|:-------------:| | ✈️ Flights (round trip) | $xxx | | 🏨 Hotel (N nights) | $xxx | | 🎫 Attraction tickets | $xxx | | 🚕 Local transport (Uber/shuttle) | $xxx | | 🍔 Meals (N days) | $xxx | | Total (approx) | ~$xxx |

• Use real fares and rates where available, rounded estimates where not
• For groups paying separately, show per-person cost and each paying subgroup/team total, with an explicit split rule for shared lodging and transportation
• State the exact dates and nights in the budget heading; do not reuse an earlier duration after the user corrects it
• Label which numbers are verified vs. estimates
• Include a suggested date range (midweek preferred, event dates to avoid)

• — Elvis/Graceland-specific research: pricing, packages, attractions list, tips for a 70-year-old traveler

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: AtlasOmnia
• Source: AtlasOmnia/donna-starter
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.