Delta Locals Trip Planner Launches With Local Guides

Delta Air Lines has turned its CES preview into a live product, with the new Delta Locals trip planner launching on November 19, 2025 and highlighting resident stories from Los Angeles, Tokyo, Patagonia, and Sicily. The digital platform targets travelers who want more than generic top ten lists, particularly Delta customers building international or long haul trips through the airline network. Travelers can use it to narrow down where to stay, what to do, and how to spend limited time in each destination before they lock in flights and hotels.

In practical terms, the Delta Locals trip planner adds a branded layer of local video recommendations that travelers and advisors can use to shape itineraries before they book Delta flights or other components of a trip.

How Delta Locals Works

Delta describes Locals as a digital storytelling and trip planning companion that blends curated itineraries with video based profiles of residents in each featured destination. After previewing the concept at CES 2025 as part of its centennial year showcase, the airline has now opened the platform to the public, positioning it as a way to discover the next trip through community voices rather than only search engines and guidebooks.

Access starts at DeltaLocals.com, where an interactive globe shows pins for participating cities. At launch, those pins lead to content hubs for Los Angeles, Tokyo, Patagonia, and Sicily, matching Delta s initial four focus regions. Travelers spin the globe, click a city, then see profiles for individual locals, each with short introduction clips and thematic videos that cover food, art, outdoor activities, or neighborhood walks.

Within each destination, the platform organizes content around the individual resident. A surfer in Los Angeles, a painter in Sicily, a sushi chef in Tokyo, and a chef in Patagonia stand in for broader local communities, giving viewers concrete examples of where they actually spend time and why those places matter. Clips often pair a specific location or venue with a narrative about why it is worth a visit, which can help travelers quickly separate everyday favorites from purely tourist oriented stops.

Delta also positions Locals as part of a larger technology push, alongside tools like its Delta Concierge digital assistant in the Fly Delta app, which aims to use generative artificial intelligence for trip support. Where Concierge focuses on operational questions and service, Locals is clearly aimed at the dreaming and planning stage.

Current Destinations And The Road Map Through 2026

According to Delta s launch materials, the first wave of content centers on Los Angeles, Tokyo, Patagonia, and Sicily, with each destination featuring several local storytellers and multiple short videos. This anchors the platform in a mix of major city, broad region, and island, which gives travelers a feel for both urban and more nature focused trips.

Delta says additional destinations will join the roster in late 2025 and throughout 2026. Travel trade coverage and the site itself show teaser pins for Curacao, Austin, and Dublin, which appear on the globe but do not yet have fully built local profiles. That combination hints that the airline intends to mix secondary U.S. cities, European capitals, and Caribbean or resort markets as it scales the concept.

For travelers, the staggered rollout means the tool is most useful right now if a near term trip lines up with one of the launch destinations. Someone planning Tokyo for spring 2026 can already mine several local perspectives, while a traveler bound for Dublin will likely see only a placeholder pin until Delta publishes resident stories there.

Background: Why Airlines Are Building Inspiration Tools

Airlines have long hosted destination guides on their websites, but those pages have often read like generic tourism marketing copy. Over the past few years, large carriers have started to experiment with more personalized and story driven digital content, from airline produced city videos to partnerships with influencers and local creatives.

Delta Locals goes a step further by turning those local narratives into the primary navigation surface. Instead of sorting by attraction category alone, visitors browse by individual local, which can help them imagine how they might experience a city if they followed a specific person s routine for a day or two. It also keeps the airline s brand present in the planning process without forcing explicit sales messages into every clip.

For context on where this fits alongside other digital tools, travelers who lean heavily on airline apps and map services may want to treat Delta Locals as one layer among many, using it for qualitative inspiration, then relying on flight search, mapping apps, and local tourism sites for schedules, pricing, and accessibility details. A deeper evergreen overview of airline apps and planning platforms can help explain how to stack those tools effectively. For that type of structural context, readers can refer to Adept Traveler s broader guide to digital trip planning tools.

How Travelers And Advisors Can Use Delta Locals

For individual travelers, the most obvious use case is the pre booking research phase. Before locking in a trip to Tokyo, for example, you might watch several local videos to decide whether you care more about gallery districts, surf beaches, or neighborhood food streets. That, in turn, can influence which side of a city you stay on, how many nights you allocate, and whether you build in extra days for side trips.

The short, focused clips also make it easier to plan within realistic time limits. Instead of assembling an overly dense list of must see attractions, you might follow one or two locals worth of recommendations and accept that a shorter stay only allows a partial sample. This can reduce the sense of obligation that often comes from overstuffed itineraries.

Travel advisors can treat Delta Locals as a visual catalog of vibe and experience that complements more formal supplier content. When a client says they want an arts forward city break in Sicily or a mix of food and outdoor time in Patagonia, an advisor can send a few relevant Locals clips alongside a draft itinerary. That helps confirm the client s preferences before finalizing hotel choices and excursions, which can reduce back and forth later.

At the same time, both travelers and advisors should remember that Locals is not a real time operations or safety platform. Restaurant openings, venue hours, and neighborhood dynamics can change between filming and a future trip. Any venue highlighted in a video should be cross checked against current listings, official websites, and local advisories, particularly if it sits in a rapidly evolving part of a city.

Practical Limits And What It Does Not Do

Delta Locals does not replace other tools in the trip planning stack. It does not show flight availability, fare calendars, or real time entry rules, and it does not track disruptions like weather or air traffic control delays. For those tasks, travelers still need the Fly Delta app, airline notifications, and official government sources.

The platform also reflects a curated slice of each destination. Creators are chosen because they fit Delta s brand and storytelling goals, not because they capture every subculture in a given city or region. There is value in that curation, but travelers who need to tailor trips around accessibility, dietary constraints, or sensitive safety considerations should layer in more specialized research.

Finally, because the first wave of cities is limited, travelers heading to places outside Los Angeles, Tokyo, Patagonia, or Sicily will not find much direct guidance yet. For those trips, Delta Locals is more a preview of what might be available in future seasons than a tool to use this year.

What Travelers Should Do Next

If you are already planning or considering a trip to one of the launch destinations, it is worth spending an evening with Delta Locals before you finalize bookings. Watch a handful of local profiles, note two or three recommendations that match your interests, then bring that list into conversations with anyone else involved in planning the trip.

For trips further out, keep an eye on the pins for Curacao, Austin, and Dublin, which signal where content is likely to expand as Delta rolls out more locals through late 2025 and 2026. As the platform grows, it should become one of several entry points for building trips that feel more grounded in the everyday life of the places you visit, rather than only their most famous landmarks.

Sources

• Travel inspiration at your fingertips: New travel planning companion from Delta brings recommendations from experts who know best
• Delta soars into Centennial year with game changing innovations at CES 2025
• Delta Locals
• Delta Air Lines introduces Delta Locals: A new way to plan trips with local insights