A while back, I wrote about exploring the human connection in travel in the era of AI. At the time, I was deep in the process of figuring out how to make Map Your City — the travel app I had been building for years — ready for the AI era. That piece forced me to confront a question that has stayed with me ever since: as AI reshapes how we plan, navigate, and experience travel, what happens to the human side of it all?

The Legacy Days of Travel

There was a time when travel was inherently human. You asked a friend for a recommendation. You got lost in a neighborhood and stumbled into a conversation with a local shopkeeper. You followed a handwritten note on a hostel wall to a restaurant that changed your life. The friction of not knowing was part of the magic — it opened doors to real, unplanned human moments.

Map Your City was born from that spirit. The idea was simple: let people map the places that matter to them, share local knowledge, and help travelers discover a city through the eyes of the people who actually live there. It was community-driven, personal, and deeply rooted in the belief that the best travel recommendations come from real people, not algorithms.

Why I Decided to Sunset Map Your City

But the world kept moving. AI didn’t just arrive — it fundamentally changed what travelers expect. People now want instant, intelligent, personalized answers. They want to ask a question and get a response that feels like it was crafted just for them. The tools and platforms travelers use have shifted, and staying relevant meant more than just adding an AI layer on top of an existing product.

I realized that Map Your City, as it was, couldn’t fully deliver on the promise I cared about most — making authentic, human-centered travel accessible to everyone in this new era. The architecture, the approach, the entire product philosophy needed rethinking. So I made the difficult decision to sunset Map Your City and start fresh.

That’s how Ask Seve was born.

The Thread That Carried Over

When I sat down to design Ask Seve, that central theme from my earlier writing kept surfacing: technology should enhance human connection, not replace it. Every design decision was filtered through that lens.

AI is extraordinarily good at processing information, finding patterns, and generating recommendations at scale. But the soul of great travel — the serendipitous encounter, the local perspective, the feeling of being somewhere rather than just visiting — that’s fundamentally human. The challenge was to build something that uses AI’s strengths while preserving what makes travel meaningful.

Ask Seve is my answer to that challenge. It’s built to be the knowledgeable local friend everyone deserves when they travel — one that can give you a thoughtful, personalized recommendation in seconds, but one that ultimately points you toward real places, real experiences, and real human moments.

What AI-Enhanced Travel Should Look Like

I believe the next generation of travel tools should follow a few principles:

  • Amplify local voices, don’t drown them out. AI should surface authentic local knowledge — not generic, SEO-optimized content that could describe any city.
  • Remove friction, but not all of it. Make it easy to find what you’re looking for, but leave room for the unexpected. Some of the best travel memories come from happy accidents.
  • Personalize without isolating. Recommendations should feel personal, but they should also nudge you toward the communal — the neighborhood café where locals gather, the market where you’ll rub shoulders with the city.
  • Be a starting point, not the destination. The best thing a travel tool can do is get you out of the app and into the world.

Looking Forward

The journey from Map Your City to Ask Seve taught me that sunsetting a product isn’t failure — it’s evolution. The DNA of what made Map Your City special lives on in Ask Seve: the belief that travel is fundamentally about people, that local knowledge is irreplaceable, and that technology works best when it brings us closer together rather than further apart.

If you read that original piece on Inside Tech, you’ll see the seeds of everything Ask Seve has become. The questions I was asking then are the ones I’m still answering now — just with better tools and a clearer vision.

Travel will keep changing. AI will keep advancing. But the desire to connect, to discover, to feel the pulse of a place through its people — that’s timeless. And that’s what Ask Seve is built to protect.

Have thoughts on the intersection of AI and authentic travel? I’d love to hear them. Find us at askseve.com or reach out on social media.

— Caroline Vrauwdeunt