Events and travel: checklists, run sheets, suppliers and trips

Events and travel are detail jobs: dozens of small tasks, hard deadlines and lots of other people's information. AI helps with the planning scaffolding: checklists, timings, comparisons, first drafts of the emails. It is weak on anything that changes often, such as timetables, prices, opening hours and entry rules, and it has no business holding travellers' passport details. This guide shows where it earns its place and where the official source has to win.

The examples follow Maya Roberts, Office Manager at Fernway Group (our fictional practice company), and Leah Bennett, Operations Assistant.

Event planning: the checklist

A checklist is where AI is most useful at the start. It brings up the things you might otherwise only remember the day before. Give it the shape of the event and ask for the list by timeline.

I'm planning a one-day customer event for a UK business that sells office equipment. About 60 guests, mostly facilities and office managers from customer businesses. Morning product demonstrations, lunch, afternoon of three short talks. At a hired venue in the Midlands, in October. We have a fixed budget.

Write a planning checklist grouped by timeline: 4 months before, 2 months, 1 month, 2 weeks, 1 week, the day before, on the day, afterwards. Leave the owner column blank.

Then, separately, list things people commonly forget for an event like this, including accessibility, dietary needs, parking, signage, insurance and what happens if a speaker drops out.

Maya reads the list against her own experience and cuts about a third: the tool suggested a gift bag budget and a photographer that Erin doesn't want. She adds two items it couldn't know, such as the demonstration equipment needing Fernway's own van. The list becomes her tracker.

The run sheet

A run sheet is the minute-by-minute plan for the day: who does what, where and when. AI builds a good first draft if you give it the fixed points.

Build a run sheet for the event day as a table: time, what happens, where, who's responsible, notes.

Fixed points: venue access from 7:30; guests arrive 9:30; welcome 10:00; demonstrations 10:15 to 12:30; lunch 12:30 to 13:30; talks 13:30 to 15:00; close 15:15; venue clear by 17:00. Roles: event lead, registration, demonstrations lead, speaker liaison, venue contact.

Include set-up and pack-down. Use role names, not people's names. Flag anywhere the timings look too tight, and anything that depends on something else happening first.

Check the times add up and match what the venue confirmed. Then walk through the day in your head, or with the team, from arrival to pack-down. Download the event run sheet template if you want a standard layout.

Comparing suppliers

Maya has three catering quotes. They are laid out differently: one includes VAT, one doesn't, one prices per head and another per platter. AI is good at putting them side by side, and quite capable of adding them up wrongly.

Check every total with a calculator. Ask the suppliers about each "not stated". Then decide, weighing things the table can't: the caterer who handled last year's event well, or the one whose cancellation terms protect you if numbers drop. The full exercise is in Compare supplier quotes.

Quotes are commercial information. Use your organisation's approved tool for them.

Dietary and access needs

Guests will tell you about allergies, dietary requirements and access needs. Allergies and medical conditions are health information, which UK data protection law treats as special category data needing extra protection. Keep names out of any AI tool. If you want help planning, give counts: "4 vegetarian, 2 gluten-free, 1 nut allergy, 2 guests using wheelchairs". That is all a menu or a room layout needs.

Travel: research with honest limits

AI is helpful for the thinking: which routes make sense, what to consider, what to ask, how to lay out an itinerary. It is unreliable on the facts that change: train and flight times, prices, check-in rules, strike dates, and above all passport, visa and entry requirements. It may give you last year's answer with full confidence.

My managing director needs to travel from the south-east of England to a supplier in the Netherlands for two days, then on to a meeting in Manchester. I'm organising it.

Suggest two or three sensible route options with the trade-offs of each (time, likely cost level, reliability, working time on the move). Don't give me specific times or prices, as I'll get those from the operators.

Then give me a checklist of everything I should confirm before booking and before travel, with the type of official source to check each against. Include entry requirements, travel insurance, and our company travel policy.

For entry requirements, passport validity rules and safety, the reference point is the country's page on GOV.UK foreign travel advice. Check it when booking and again shortly before travel, because it changes.

Building the itinerary

Once everything is booked, AI can turn a stack of confirmations into a clean itinerary. Before pasting anything, strip out:

• passport numbers (these never go into any AI tool)
• dates of birth, home addresses and personal phone numbers
• loyalty and frequent flyer numbers
• payment card details and booking references you don't need

What's left, such as times, places, hotel names and meeting addresses, is what an itinerary needs. Leah pastes those into Fernway's approved tool and asks for a day-by-day plan with travel buffers, then checks every time against the original confirmations, because times are exactly what gets copied wrongly.

When not to use AI

Data safety

Events and travel mean handling other people's details: guests' names and dietary needs, travellers' passports and home addresses. Give AI only what the task needs, which is usually counts, times and places. Never paste passport numbers, payment details or health information about named people into an AI tool. Your organisation's policy and approved tools still take priority. If you're unsure, the Can I put this in ChatGPT? tool walks you through the decision.

What to check

Common mistakes

• Trusting AI on timetables and prices. They change constantly and the tool may be months out of date. Always go to the operator.
• Taking entry rules from a chatbot. A confident wrong answer about a visa or passport validity can stop someone travelling. Use GOV.UK.
• Comparing quotes on different bases. Including VAT on one and not another makes the cheaper quote look dearer. Ask the tool to normalise, then check it did.
• Pasting whole booking confirmations. They carry far more personal data than an itinerary needs.
• Naming guests alongside dietary or access needs. Counts do the job.
• Accepting the generic checklist as complete. The tool doesn't know your venue, your guests or your van. Your additions are what make it work.