Show HN: AI-Powered Trip Planner

Help Needed! What should I do to promote this AI Travel Planner app? Without any coding experience, I spent 3 days vibe coding to build this travel planner app. But several months later, there are no downloads at all. I have a couple of issues that can’t be solved by vibe coding.

Main features: 1. Plan ahead: Users can create multiple trips and save the places they want to visit. They can also see the places on the map.

2. Place details: Users can access local weather forecasts, ETAs between places, place details, website, directions, phone numbers, and info. They can also use AI to ask for more info about any specific place.

3. AI planner: Users can choose a city and visit dates, then AI will create an itinerary based on their preferences or a travel guide page. Also, they can upload their flight tickets and reservation images, and then AI will add them to the itinerary accordingly. In short, users can just create a one-week itinerary in one minute, and AI will introduce each place.

Main Issues:

Positioning Issue: Too many competitors: I have to admit it’s not an amazing idea that no one has ever thought about. There are so many apps that do the same thing. I do want to get into a niche market rather than compete with those big apps, but I have no clue.

What are some niche markets in the travel industry I can explore?

Product Issue: There was no survey, and I just built this app based on what I need when I travel. I found it’s difficult to do the research before going to a new city. I need to decide if I should walk or take Uber between places based on the distance and ETAs. Need to know more info about a place, and prepare based on the weather.

Maybe people have different ways to plan their trips? Or they don’t need all this info when they travel. How do you plan your trip? What travel info do you usually need when you travel?

Promotion issues: I’ve tried app store ads and social media, but increasing the budget on cost per tap didn’t generate any taps or downloads.

Should I target some less competitive keywords? Or how should I advertise this app?

Tech issues: To keep the app secure, I just followed the suggestions by ChatGPT. The backend is based on Google services. Firebase Authentication, Firestore, AppCheck. Google Cloud Secret Manager to save OpenAI KPI key, Cloud Function to run OpenAI request, and API Gateway in the code. I heard many people without any coding experience accidentally exposed their API keys. I’m not sure if this is safe enough.

Should I improve anything?

Please let me know what I can do to solve these issues and promote this app. Thank you so much!