Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
The best way to gauge the success of a vacation is how you feel when it ends. So as pop culture becomes more aware of "the vibe economy"-the idea that consumers are willing to pay more to feel a certain way-it's no surprise that travel professionals are hoping to capitalize on it.
On Feb. 13, bespoke travel outfitter Black Tomato is launching a new digital tool called the "Feelings Engine" to help travelers identify destinations that will make them feel relaxed, reinvigorated, inspired, excited-or whatever emotion they're seeking. Co-founder Tom Marchant calls it a "return to the company's roots," noting that when the company was founded in 2005, its original website similarly prompted travelers to choose destinations based on their emotional desires. And because it's now 2025, he's using generative AI to turn an awkward, tricky-to-answer question-"how do you want to feel?"-into something of a game.
"Back in the day, companies in our industry were mainly concerned with destinations, activities, things you could see-but not really with how you'd feel. From Day 1, we felt like we didn't always know where we wanted to go, but we did know how we wanted to feel. It's something we've constantly gone back to," says Marchant of his company's credo. "Now we're using cutting-edge technology to bring it back to the fore."
Marchant isn't alone in emphasizing the feelings that come from travel, of course. Misty Belles, communications director at Virtuoso Ltd., a collective of some 20,000 travel consultants, says her company runs a survey in collaboration with YouGov each year about travel patterns, spending and the "emotional drivers" behind it all. In its most recent poll, 65% of US travelers sought "joy or happiness." An overlapping 57% said "awe and wonder" were important emotional drivers in their travel plans. "Excitement" came in at 51%. Ultimately, she says, "this is really what luxury is about-how you make someone feel."
• How it works
Black Tomato's Feelings Engine-part of a broader marketing push around "the pursuit of feeling"-is a standalone website that, much like ChatGPT, invites users to open a digital conversation much as you would start a Google search. "All you need to do is share how you want to feel and our Engine will suggest a trip that embodies it," the landing page explains. The white box that prompts you to begin chatting includes sample prompts such as, "I want to feel … challenged." Within moments, that emotion will generate one great trip idea and some itinerary details to get you inspired and, if needed, kick off a longer conversation.
In beta tests leading up to the launch, the tool was better at providing an endearingly fun user experience than actually usable vacation ideas. The tone is cheeky; the visuals while you wait for results include adorable animated line drawings. Expecting any AI tool to hit a home run on anything is a tall order, and travel planning is infinitely personal, making that task even trickier to nail. It's why travel agents exist. But as with other tricky tasks, one of the hardest parts of travel planning is just getting started-and the Feelings Engine makes that feel like a game worth playing again and again.
"Relaxed" can mean many things to Black Tomato: Two options it suggested in response to that emotion were a spiritual discovery in Nepal and Bhutan or a Spain trip built around the Alhambra at sunset. "Is that kid friendly?" I asked about the Nepal trip, leading it to refine the results. A Scottish castle stay may be better for families, it said.
Each of the 400 or so sketched-out itineraries that the Engine can currently suggest are tagged to correspond to a full range of emotions. And one of the tool's coolest tricks is that it can describe one place in different ways, depending on the desired feeling-just like a human travel agent could adapt the same pitch for different situations.
A "restful" Maui itinerary invites you to imagine "waking up to the sound of waves at the luxurious Hotel Wailea in Maui" and "move to your own pace between moments of pure relaxation and gentle activity, like paddling alongside sea turtles in calm waters." The same itinerary can come up if you want "wonder in nature," now with an elevator pitch that includes "the magic of the Haleakala Crater." (Black Tomato's agents would continue to customize these trips for clients who are interested in booking.)
There are limitations to the Engine's responsiveness. The tool does not collect location data so it doesn't do well with follow-up requests for itineraries that are "closer to home." And it generally doesn't have information on flights, so you can't, for example, ensure a destination has direct service from your home airport.
And sometimes the inventory just doesn't match your needs. When I asked the Engine for something around the West Coast, it offered the closest match in its catalog: "A Gourmet-Fuelled Road Trip" in New England. But it seemed self-aware of the mismatch. After the suggestion came a very human-like apology: "I notice you're specifically interested in the West Coast of the United States," it began. "While this itinerary explores the East Coast, Black Tomato specializes in creating custom luxury experiences. We would be delighted to craft a bespoke itinerary for you featuring the natural wonders of California, Oregon, or Washington."
• Traveling for the Vibes
Even if traveling for the vibes isn't new, there's a reason it feels especially salient now, argues Jack Ezon of Embark Beyond, another travel consultancy specializing in ultra-high-net-worth clients. "The old bucket list is gone," he says. "Younger people have been traveling the world since they were kids with their parents." They've seen it all, he says, "and now they're going back to places that they have already been but for new reasons-because of the vibe, the ambiance, the shopping, the scene."
He adds that people come to him asking simply "to get away" or "for something epic" to celebrate an occasion, and that travelers are increasingly looking to connect more than they're looking to check off sites and attractions. "It's really not about the destination anymore," he says.
Virtuoso offers training to its agents on how to talk to guests about what they really want from their travels. "Okay, you want to go to Thailand to have the White Lotus experience," they might tell a client. "But what are you really looking for from that experience?" Belles says that when agents are able to track motivations, it reinforces the utility of a travel agent to properly steer travelers towards trips that will hit all the right notes. In other words, it makes them more useful than ChatGPT.
"We've always done things a little differently," Marchant says. "This is exactly the kind of thing we're good at, using our human experience and our obsession with emotion to put things together in inspiring new ways."
And embracing technology, he adds, "will just help us bring more people in-to allow us to do all the cool stuff even better and for more people."