Plan smarter trips
just by talking to Claude.
Connect ChicTravel to Claude Desktop, claude.ai, or Claude Code over MCP, and the conversation becomes the planner. Build itineraries, log flights and hotels, track the budget, reshuffle your days — every edit lands live in your real trip.
Chic, taking the news well.
Wait… you're replacing Chic with Claude?!
Relax — nobody's abandoning our beloved bird. Chic still runs the whole show inside ChicTravel. Claude just gets to help from the outside, like a very capable house guest.
They're learning to share an itinerary. It's going… mostly fine. Chic's only cried twice today.
The boring-but-useful part
What's actually happening here?
ChicTravel runs an MCP server — MCP being the Model Context Protocol, the open standard Anthropic published for connecting AI assistants to outside tools. The easiest way to picture it: a USB port for AI. You plug ChicTravel into Claude once, and Claude gains a set of real travel tools it can use whenever the conversation calls for them.
Those tools aren't a separate "integration" we maintain on the side. They're the exact same ones Chic, our in-app assistant, uses to build trips every day — creating itineraries, looking up places, moving things between days, logging expenses. Claude gets the same toolbox, pointed at the same trips, with the same permission checks.
The practical upshot: when you ask Claude to plan five days in Kyoto, you don't get a chat transcript to copy-paste somewhere. You get an actual trip in your ChicTravel account, with real places pinned on a real map, that your travel companions can open and start poking at immediately.
What Claude can do
Your itinerary, one message away
Everything below works today, from Claude Desktop, claude.ai, or Claude Code.
Start a trip from one sentence
"Plan me 5 days in Lisbon in October." Claude resolves the destination to a real place, creates the trip, and sets up the day slots — you open ChicTravel and the skeleton is already there.
Add places that are actually places
When Claude adds a restaurant or a museum, it gets looked up properly — photo, address, pin on your trip map. Not a bullet list you have to re-type into a planner later.
Reshuffle days like a local would
Move that overbooked Tuesday around: Claude can reorder stops within a day, shift things to other days, and regroup your plan by neighborhood so you stop crisscrossing the city.
Log flights and hotels
Paste your flight details into the chat and they land on the itinerary with the right times. Hotels show up as a banner across every night of the stay, photo included.
Keep the budget honest
Set a trip budget, log expenses as they happen ("that dinner was €68"), and ask what's left. Claude reads the same budget your travel companions see in the app.
Notes, times, and transport
Drop a reminder on day 2 to book the Sagrada Família tickets, give the food tour a 10am start, or switch a leg from driving to walking. The small edits, handled in passing.
Read everything it touches
Ask "what trips do I have coming up?" or "what does day 3 in Kyoto look like?" — Claude pulls the full day-by-day plan, places, notes, and order, then reasons about it.
Check the web mid-plan
Opening hours, whether that ferry runs in winter, what's near your hotel — Claude can run a web search in the middle of planning without you switching tabs.
See it in action
Just say what you want
Real things you can ask Claude once ChicTravel is connected. Copy one, tweak it, and watch your trip update.
"Build me a 4-day Tokyo trip focused on food and neighborhoods I can walk."
"Day 3 of my Kyoto trip looks overstuffed — move two things to day 4 and add a lunch spot near Arashiyama."
"Look at my Barcelona trip and add notes for the best time to visit each spot."
"Add my flight: SFO to Tokyo on June 12, departs 11:05am, lands 2:25pm the next day."
"Set my Lisbon budget to $1,800 and log the $240 I just spent on the flight."
"Create a relaxed 7-day Bali itinerary — beaches first half, culture second."
"What trips do I have on the books, and which ones still have empty days?"
"Add a note to day 1 of my Rome trip to pre-book the Colosseum underground tour."
"Make me a 2-day Portland weekend with coffee, bookstores, and one hike."
One tip from our own use: be concrete about days. "Move the temple to day 3" beats "move the temple to later." Claude reads your itinerary before editing, so naming a day gets you exactly what you meant on the first try.
Setup
Connect ChicTravel to Claude
It takes about a minute either way. You'll need a ChicTravel account (free is fine) and a Claude plan that supports custom connectors. This is the connector URL for both paths:
https://chictravel.ai/api/mcpClaude Desktop & claude.ai
Open Claude's connector settings
In Claude (the desktop app or claude.ai), go to Settings → Connectors and choose "Add custom connector."
Paste your ChicTravel URL
Drop in the connector URL below. Claude walks you through a quick sign-in so it acts as you — and only you.
Start planning out loud
Ask Claude to create a trip or tweak an itinerary. Edits show up live in ChicTravel — even for collaborators watching.
Claude Code
If you live in the terminal, you don't have to leave it. Add ChicTravel as an MCP server with one command:
claude mcp add --transport http chictravel https://chictravel.ai/api/mcpThen run /mcp inside Claude Code to sign in to your ChicTravel account. That's the whole setup.
From there, "plan me a long weekend in Mexico City" works between builds. We won't judge what your commit history looks like the week before a vacation.
Your data, your rules
Claude signs in as you and only ever sees the trips you own or collaborate on — the exact same access you have in the app. Every action runs through the same permission checks as a click in ChicTravel; there's no side door. Nothing is shared with other users, and you can disconnect the connector from Claude at any time to cut off access instantly.
And because edits show up in the app in real time, you're never wondering what the AI did — you can literally watch the places land on the map while Claude works.
Questions we keep getting
What is MCP, in plain words?+
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard for plugging tools into AI assistants — think of it as a USB port for AI. ChicTravel runs an MCP server at https://chictravel.ai/api/mcp, and when you connect it, Claude gains a set of travel tools: create a trip, read an itinerary, add a place, log an expense. Claude decides when to use them based on what you ask; you just talk.
Which Claude plans support custom connectors?+
Custom connectors are a feature of Claude's paid plans. The quick check: open Claude's settings — if you see a "Connectors" section with an "Add custom connector" option, you're set. Claude Code (the terminal app) supports MCP servers on any plan that includes it.
Does this work with Claude Code?+
Yes. Run "claude mcp add --transport http chictravel https://chictravel.ai/api/mcp" in your terminal, then type /mcp inside Claude Code to sign in to ChicTravel. After that you can plan trips from the same terminal you work in — handy when a trip idea strikes mid-commit.
What can Claude actually see and touch?+
Exactly what you can: the trips you own or collaborate on, nothing else. The connector signs in as you through ChicTravel's standard sign-in, and every action is checked against your account on our side. Disconnect it from Claude's settings at any time and access ends immediately.
Can Claude wreck my itinerary?+
Edits apply to your real trip, so Claude can absolutely move your museum day — that's the point. But destructive actions are guarded: deleting an entire trip requires Claude to explicitly confirm you asked for it, and every change shows up live in the app, so you can watch what it's doing as it works.
How is this different from Chic, the assistant inside ChicTravel?+
Same toolbox, different doorway. Chic lives inside the app and is the best way to plan when you're looking at the map. The Claude connector is for when you're already in a Claude conversation — researching a destination, say — and want the plan to land in a real itinerary instead of a wall of chat text.
Does the connector cost anything?+
Not from us. It works with a free ChicTravel account — no credit card, no Pro requirement. You only need a Claude plan that supports connectors on the Anthropic side.
I use a different AI assistant. Am I out of luck?+
Less than you'd think. MCP is an open standard, so any MCP-capable client can connect to the same URL. And ChicTravel Pro can export your full trip context as a file you can hand to any AI tool you like.
Curious how the connector stacks up in practice? We wrote a full walkthrough of planning a trip with Claude on the blog.
Bring Claude along for the planning
Create a free ChicTravel account, connect Claude, and plan your next trip in conversation.
No credit card required