- Google upgraded its AI-powered travel tools
- AI can plan personalized itineraries, find flight deals and manage reservations
- The reservation agent will book restaurants, tickets and appointments directly from search, with upcoming flights and hotels
If you’ve ever tried to plan a vacation and found yourself drowning in tabs, Google has some news that might make your vacation a little less chaotic. Or at least reduce tab clutter. Google has rolled out three travel improvements powered by its AI mode in search.
The features aim to make the most boring parts of travel planning easier: comparing too many options, jumping from one booking site to another, and trying to figure out where to stay, eat, and what to do between eating and sleeping. New tools include smarter itinerary creation with Canvas, global expansion of its AI-powered flight deal search and expanded agent booking capabilities.
The biggest change comes with the new Canvas for Travel in AI Mode, designed to help you plan a trip. It allows you to create personalized itineraries based on requests as simple or detailed as “I want to take a five-day trip to Austin with my family next spring and enjoy good barbecue and live music not too far from the hotel.” » The AI will immediately begin putting together a plan in Canvas.
The map that appears brings together real-time data from Google Flights and Hotels, reviews and photos from Google Maps, and curated information from around the web. You’ll get options, suggestions, and comparisons, like which hotel has the best reviews for its breakfast versus which one has the pool your kids will actually use.
And it’s not a static spreadsheet either. Canvas is interactive, so you can point it toward better brunch spots, make compromises based on location, or ask the AI to update your plans if your flight dates change.
Flights and virtual agents
And AI in Flight Deals could reduce the cost of your trip. After testing in the United States, Canada and India, Flight Deals is now available in over 200 countries and supports over 60 languages.
The idea is that you don’t need to know exactly where and when you want to go. Simply type something like “cheap long weekend flights from New York in February” or “somewhere warm with beaches and good food,” and Flight Deals will generate a list of suitable destinations based on affordability, timing, and traveler preferences.
However, it’s the extensive agentic AI for reservations that really grabs the attention. Google has now expanded its agent reservation capabilities to more US users in AI mode, starting with restaurants. You describe what you want, and it works, searching OpenTable, Resy, and Tock to find real-time availability that matches your request and offering a short list with ready-made reservation links.
For US Labs users, this same magic is also available for event tickets and local appointments. Now you can start a plan with just one sentence instead of seven browser tabs and a phone call.
Booking flights and hotels isn’t ready yet, but Google says it’s coming, as shown in the demo below. The company is already collaborating with major travel partners like Expedia, Marriott, Booking.com and Wyndham to develop AI direct booking in the near future.
In theory, this could create a seamless loop where your vague desire for a “sunny, relaxing early March getaway” turns into a full itinerary, including flights, a hotel near top-rated tacos, an afternoon spa appointment, and a reservation for sunset cocktails, all without ever leaving the search bar.
The usual concerns about bias and privacy are, as always, only vaguely addressed by Google. But for now at least, Google’s pitch isn’t about replacing human judgment, just about saving people time.
There are also practical implications for how we decide where to go and what to do. On the positive side, AI pushing us toward more affordable flights and recommending off-the-radar experiences is a good way to broaden people’s horizons. Then again, too many people could spoil these views.
Whether this will change the future of travel remains to be seen. But if it means one less argument over who forgot to book the hotel, it might be worth letting the AI navigate or even take the wheel for part of the trip.
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