Before any White Lotus shenanigans can happen, we need to establish a group itinerary before we can drink piña coladas together.
As much as I enjoy planning a trip, there's nothing I enjoy less than plugging 27 different events into a calendar. Here's how to do it the easy way-with the help of AI-and without painstakingly plugging in each activity one by one.
Besides patting yourself on the back for the de facto group leader (aka a Samuel), this is also perfect for wedding destination itineraries, where there may be multiple events in several different locations.
The best part is that it's very easy to create a shared group calendar with this method.
Picking the right AI engine is half of the battle
Surprisingly, Google Gemini failed in at least half of our prompt queries.
The main reason why we attempted Google Gemini first is because it has the ability to create events directly in Google Calendar, saving a few crucial-and manual-steps.
In our testing, though, we found it not to be as fully developed as some of the other chat agents we usually use, like ChatGPT.
Though it did get some things right, but by far, I had to feed events in one by one with a 50% success rate.
This got frustrating in the end, so we ended up defaulting back to ChatGPT, which has the ability to parse through data fairly well even when the text is not properly formatted. This saves sooo much of time.
Here are the exact AI prompts to create a Google Calendar
After building several Google Calendar events through ChatGPT, we've got it down to a science.
Don't worry too much about formatting the itinerary text properly. ChatGPT can parse through that information and format it. (Though we'd also recommend asking ChatGPT to format it in advance to check for accuracy. If so, use this prompt: Can you format this agenda to put in Google Calendar: [text])
In our example, we used a an industry conference agenda, though any agendas will work.
Use these prompts:
Can you create Google Calendar invites for the following text and make sure it is in [location] timezone: [text]
Here is a sample of what ChatGPT prompted back to us:
Here's your Google Calendar-friendly version of the schedule, broken into individual event entries. You can copy-paste each into Google Calendar manually, or use this as a reference to create events quickly:
📍April 30, 2025 - Cardozo Hotel, Miami Beach, FL
Event 1
Title: Townhall - AIMM's Inclusive Growth Incubator
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM (ET)
Location: Cardozo Hotel, 1300 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33139
Description: A collaborative townhall hosted by AIMM.Event 2
Title: Belonging Lounge Reception
Time: 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM (ET)
Location: Cardozo Hotel, 1300 Ocean Drive, Miami Beach, FL 33139
Description: Networking reception to connect and celebrate inclusive growth.
📍May 1, 2025 - Cardozo Hotel, Miami Beach, FL
Event 3
Title: Networking Breakfast - Sponsored by SBS and LaMusica
Time: 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM (EST)
Location: Cardozo Hotel
Description: Start the day with networking and breakfast.Event 4
Title: Welcome Remarks
Time: 9:00 AM - 9:20 AM (EST)
Location: Cardozo Hotel
Description: Speakers: Gilbert Davila and Bob Liodice (virtual)Event 5
Title: Case Studies in Inclusive Growth
Time: 9:20 AM - 9:55 AM (EST)
Location: Cardozo Hotel
Description: Real-world brand case studies on inclusive growth.[more events redacted, because you get the point!]
Would you like a downloadable
.icsfile or a Google Calendar link with all of this preloaded?
Obviously, this is the ideal response. ChatGPT has asked if we want an ICS (Google Calendar) file, which is exactly what we want.
Here was our next prompt: Can you turn this into an ICS file?
At this point, we said "Yes," and it gave me a file that I downloaded. In this case, skip straight to importing.
However, if for some reason, ChatGPT can't create the ICS file, it sure as hell can create the contents of the file.
If you're not getting a file, I would prompt it the following:
Can you get the code for the ics file?
It will then spit out something that look like this.
How to create the Google Calendar file
The next thing you want to do is to open up a text file editor, and paste the entire code into it. Go ahead and save it as "CALENDAR.ICS".
The quotes are important, since it essentially tells the computer what TYPE of file it is, and allows it to change the file extension. This works for both Mac and Windows.
Load the file into Google Calendar settings or calendar app of choice.
Make sure you are on the Import tab, and then load the ICS file.
Select the calendar you want to load it into, and that's it! You're done!
