- Google has upgraded its AI-powered travel tools
- AI can plan customized itineraries, find flight deals and manage reservations
- Agentbooking books restaurants, tickets and appointments directly from Søg, and flights and hotels are coming soon
If you’ve ever tried to plan a vacation and found yourself drowning in tabs, Google has some news to make your vacation a little less chaotic. Or at least reduce tab clutter. Google rolled out a trio of travel upgrades powered by its AI mode in search.
The features aim to ease the most annoying parts of travel planning: comparing too many options, flipping between booking sites and trying to figure out where to stay, eat and what to do between eating and sleeping. The new tools include smarter travel planning with Canvas, global expansion of its AI-powered Flight Deals search and expanded agent booking capabilities.
The biggest change is thanks to the new Canvas for Travel in AI mode, designed to help you plan a trip. It helps build customized travel plans based on requests as simple or detailed as “I want to take a five-day trip to Austin with my family next spring and get some great barbecue and live music not too far from the hotel.” The AI will immediately start assembling a plan inside the Canvas.
The plan that pops up pulls together real-time data from Google Flights and hotels, reviews and photos from Google Maps, and curated information from around the web. You get options, suggestions and comparisons, e.g. which hotel has better reviews for its breakfast versus which has the pool your kids will actually use.
And it’s not a static spreadsheet either. Canvas is interactive, so you can nudge it toward better brunch spots, make tradeoffs based on location, or ask the AI to update your plans if your flight dates change.
Flights and virtual agents
And AI in flight offers can reduce the cost of your trip. After testing in the US, Canada and India, Flight Offers is now global in over 200 countries and supports more than 60 languages.
The idea is that you don’t need to know exactly where or when you want to go. Just type in something like “cheap flights for a long weekend from New York in February” or “somewhere warm with beaches and good food” and Flight Deals will generate a list of destinations that match based on affordability, timing and traveler preferences.
However, it’s the augmented agent AI for bookings that really grabs attention. Google has now expanded agent reservation capabilities to more US users in AI mode, starting with restaurants. You describe what you want and it goes to work, searching across OpenTable, Resy and Tock to find real-time availability that matches your request and offering a short list of reservation links ready to go.
For US Labs users, the same magic is also available for event tickets and local deals. You can now start a plan with a single sentence instead of seven browser tabs and a phone call.
Flight and hotel booking isn’t ready yet, but Google says it’s coming, as shown in the demo below. The company is already working with major travel partners such as Expedia, Marriott, Booking.com and Wyndham to build direct booking through AI Mode in the near future.
In theory, this could create a seamless loop where your vague desire for “a sunny, relaxing vacation in early March” becomes a full itinerary, complete with flights, a hotel near the top-rated tacos, an afternoon spa appointment, and a reservation for sunset cocktails, all without ever leaving the search box.
The usual concerns about bias and privacy are, as always, only vaguely addressed by Google. But at least now, Google’s pitch isn’t about replacing human judgment, just saving people time.
There are also practical implications for how we decide where to go and what to do. On the plus side, artificial intelligence pushing us towards more affordable flights and recommending off-the-radar experiences is a great way to expand people’s horizons. Then again, too many people can just ruin those prospects.
Whether it changes the future of travel remains to be seen. But if it means one less argument about who forgot to book the hotel, it might be worth letting AI navigate or even take the wheel for part of the journey.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can too follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, video unboxings, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
The best business laptops for all budgets
