Travel planning

Travel Planning

Use this when the user asks for how to get somewhere, compare travel modes, estimate costs, or choose the best itinerary. Especially important for urgent, emotional, or time-sensitive trips where arrival windows matter more than generic route advice.

Default output style

• Start with empathy only when appropriate; keep it short and real.
• Give a clear recommendation first, then alternatives.
• Use bullets with exact departure/arrival times, transfer count, price, and source.
• For Telegram, avoid tables; use labeled bullets.
• State prices as observed/current, not guaranteed.
• Do not book anything unless the user explicitly asks and confirms passenger/payment details.

Workflow

1. Clarify only if required. If origin/destination are obvious enough, proceed and state assumptions.
2. Resolve dates. Use the live date/time tool before interpreting "Thursday", "Friday night", etc.
3. Define hard constraints. Arrival deadline, return window, budget sensitivity, baggage, car availability, passport/ID needs, emotional context.
4. Check multiple modes in parallel when useful:
   • Train: national/international rail APIs or carrier sites.
   • Bus: FlixBus/other coach sites.
   • Flights: Google Flights or airline sites; include airport ground transfers.
   • Driving: distance/time plus fuel/parking/tolls estimate.
5. Prefer door-to-door usefulness over raw ticket price. Add local transfer cost/time for airports and stations.
6. Verify at least the top recommendation with the carrier/source page if possible.
7. Summarize: recommended option, cheapest option, fastest/most comfortable option, return options, booking links/sources.

Useful sources and techniques

Urgent flight + ferry island transfers

When the destination has no airport or requires a ferry after flying, plan door-to-door, not just flight-to-airport.

• Identify the fastest gateway airport and the cheaper mainland fallback.
• Check the user-friendly arrival window before optimizing price. For island transfers, arriving too late can strand the user or force late speedboats.
• Search both relevant Bangkok airports when the user says "Bangkok" (e.g. BKK and DMK), but keep the final recommendation simple.
• Pair flight options with realistic ferry windows before recommending them. Allow at least 75-90 minutes from airport landing to ferry departure unless explicitly labeling a tight/risky connection.
• If airline or OTA deep-search pages are blocked by CAPTCHA/anti-bot, do not conclude there is no availability. Cross-check official schedule pages, multiple aggregator search snippets, route/flight-status pages, and ferry timetables. Present as observed availability and tell the user to verify at checkout.
• For urgent next-day travel, give a clear decision threshold: e.g. "book tomorrow if under X, otherwise shift to the fallback date/route."

See references/bangkok-koh-phangan-flight-ferry.md for the Bangkok → Koh Samui → Koh Phangan pattern, ferry windows, and search queries.

European trains via DB transport.rest

For cross-border European rail, the public DB transport.rest endpoint can return journeys and sometimes fares:

python3 - <<'PY'
import urllib.request, urllib.parse, json
params = urllib.parse.urlencode({
  'from': '8400530',        # Rotterdam Centraal
  'to': '8002549',          # Hamburg Hbf
  'departure': '2026-05-13T15:00:00+02:00',
  'results': '5',
  'language': 'en',
})
url = 'https://v6.db.transport.rest/journeys?' + params
req = urllib.request.Request(url, headers={'User-Agent': 'hermes-travel-planner'})
data = json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=40))
for j in data.get('journeys', []):
    legs = j['legs']
    lines = [l.get('line', {}).get('name', 'walk') for l in legs if l.get('line') or l.get('walking')]
    print(legs[0].get('plannedDeparture'), '->', legs[-1].get('plannedArrival'), j.get('price'), 'via', ' | '.join(lines))
PY

Find station IDs first with /locations?query=... or a client library. Treat partialFare: true as incomplete and say so.

FlixBus

FlixBus route pages often expose useful static route facts and a "See prices" interactive flow:

• Static route page gives average duration, distance, cheapest price, first/last bus, average trips/day.
• Click See prices, then step through dates using the next-day button.
• Capture directness, exact stops, "almost full" / "only 1 seat left", and whether arrival is next day.

Flights

For Netherlands to nearby European cities, check Amsterdam Schiphol even when the user is near Rotterdam; smaller airports can be much worse. Include:

• Flight price and times.
• Ground transfer: e.g. Rotterdam Centraal to Schiphol train, destination airport to city center.
• Door-to-door estimate and reliability tradeoff.

Driving estimates

When route APIs are flaky, use route-page distances or common mapping sources and calculate fuel explicitly. Example fuel estimate:

km = 574
liters_per_100 = 6.5
fuel_price = 2.05
round_trip_fuel = km * liters_per_100 / 100 * fuel_price * 2

Add parking/tolls separately and mark as estimate.

Pitfalls

• Do not present a single-mode answer for urgent travel unless clearly requested; compare bus/train/flight/driving.
• For funerals, medical, legal, or other emotional travel: prioritize arrival certainty and rest, not just cheapest fare.
• Avoid overloading the user with every itinerary; give the top 2-4 and a recommendation.
• Prices can change quickly; say "observed" and include booking source.
• Browser travel sites can be slow or flaky. If one source stalls, switch sources rather than waiting indefinitely.
• Do not retry blocked/timeout route commands that the environment explicitly flags as blocked.
• Do not treat OTA anti-bot blocks as route unavailability. Use snippets and independent schedule sources, then label confidence and checkout-verification needs.
• For flight-to-ferry routes, avoid recommending flights that land after the normal ferry schedule unless explicitly framed as a late/risky fallback.

References

• references/netherlands-hamburg-urgent-travel.md — session notes from Rotterdam/Hamburg urgent funeral travel research, including FlixBus, DB transport.rest, KLM/Google Flights findings, and routing pitfalls.
• references/flight-booking-calendar-fit.md — pattern for finding a specific flight, handling blocked airline deep links, and checking whether the departure works with the user's calendar and airport buffer.

Verification checklist

Before final response:

• Dates match the user's requested weekdays and current year.
• Arrival/departure windows are explicitly satisfied or called out as imperfect.
• Prices have sources and are not implied as guaranteed.
• Return options are included if requested.
• Booking links/sources are included without performing booking.