How to plan and budget for your next tour using AI.

Watch the tutorial

I recently completed a three-week tour that I had planned and budgeted for using AI. Watch the video to see how you too can save time and leave better prepared for your next tour.

What you need to start:

A - Tour itinerary 

B - Guarantee or guesstimates 

C - Merch guesstimates 

D - Fixed costs (Van rental, etc) or estimates

Step 1: Prompt an AI platform. In the video I used www.perplexity.ai which I find to be faster and more accurate than Chat GPT at the moment.

Here's the prompt:

Act like an expert tour manager, a business and logistics consultant for musicians and bands. You help small bands maximize their budget and time but you also pass along helpful suggestions from your experience working with bigger bands and artists. I will be asking you for data about gas, hotels, and all things logistics regarding an upcoming tour and you are going to pull real-time data to provide resourceful answers. I'd like the tour to profitable but I also want to maintain fun, good vibes, and comfort. Step 2 - Submit the inquiry: 

Below are the tour dates I will be on. Give me your response in a format I can easily paste onto Google sheets. You will provide the same to columns (column 1 and 2) I paste below and add columns with the following information:

• Column 3: Venue address

• Column 4: Miles from the previous venue to the one on this row

• Column 5: Estimated drive time

• Column 6: Origin and destination time zone taking into account the locations and time of year.

• Column 7: Suggested departure time.

  - Consider that I need to be at the next venue each day by 3 PM. 

  - Include a one hour buffer for gas and bathroom breaks in your calculations.

  - When you state times, in this and any other column use standard notation time.

• Column 8: Provide estimated cost of gas from one venue to the next.

  - Consider local gas prices.

  - Consider we will be in a 2018 15 passenger Chevrolet Express van.

• Column 9: I need nightly average hotel cost estimates for my tour stops in each city, reflecting typical prices for one room with two queen-bed standard at budget chains such as Best Western, Super 8, Microtel, Hampton Suites, Quality Inn. 

  - Including taxes, fees and regional price variations as of 2025.

  - For travel days marked ''OFF'' when no show is scheduled, use the overall tour average hotel cost for budgeting.

  - Factor in local market differences to give different nightly rates per city rather than using the same average everywhere.

• Column 10: A notes column where you Include any suggestions or notes about any particular drives where there may be high traffic, timezone change, or any other detail that may be helpful.

Other considerations: Take into account that we start driving from [enter city] on [enter date], add a first row for our starting position and on the row corresponding to the first show you should state the drive times and other info that corresponds from [origin city] to [first show' city] and continue with that cadence for the rest. 

Take into account that we do not want to drive a lot overnight, but on days where the next show is 5 or more hours away, we are willing to drive an hour or two (at max) after the show to cut into the next day’s drive. You can suggest the night drives in the “notes column.”

Here are the tour dates:

Wed, Oct 15	XXX
Thu, Oct 16	XXX
Fri, Oct 17	XXX
Sat, Oct 18	XXX
Sun, Oct 19	XXX
Mon, Oct 20	OFF
Tue, Oct 21	XXX

Step 3 - Paste results into a spreadsheet. I used Google Sheets.

In the case of using prompts, and requesting info similar to my example, you should be looking at something like this:

Step 4 - Add columns for "Estimates" and "Actuals"

In my example, I added the following columns: Payout Estimate, Payout Actual, Gas Actual, Hotel Actual, Merch Estimate, Merch Actual. (Highlighted in green below)

Fill out the "Estimate" columns for Payout, and Merch as best you can using previous shows as a reference if possible. Gas and Hotel estimates are provided by the platform.

Fill out the Actuals columns after every show.

Add a Projection Summary section, and am Actuals summary section.

In my example I lumped all extra costs in as "Misc." but definitely create separate rows for fixed expenses such as rentals, sound person, booking agent cut, etc etc. to infinity.

5 - Do the math

Show earnings + Merch gross - all your expenses = profit (hopefully!)

Hopefully this can help you make decisions like if you can afford a sound person, if you need to stay at a few friends' houses, how much you need to sell merch for, and more.

Once you get home and compare the actuals to the projection, you can see what you need to tweak on your next run.

Have fun!

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