Planning a dream vacation may be daunting, despite the fact that travel is one of my favorite activities and my favorite things to spend money on. Even though I’ve taken several local and foreign vacations, I still find the planning and booking process to be stressful.
A poll conducted in March 2025 found that 44% of Americans want to travel this summer that involves a flight or hotel. As a result, millions of Americans are assembling their passports, planning their trips, and getting ready for summer travel. If that describes you, you could be seeking assistance with organizing your vacation.
AI can be useful in the situation. Numerous more AI tools are available for use in trip planning, such as Booking.com’s AI Trip Planner, which may serve as your AI-powered travel agent, or a general-purpose chatbot like ChatGPT that can respond to all of your travel-related questions. However, I typically utilize Google tools. In particular, there are important Google AI tools that may help you with every aspect of your summer vacation preparation.
Google this week revealed a number of improvements and new AI features for its suite of vacation-booking applications and services. Examine these Google Search, Maps, Lens, and Gemini upgrades to help you organize and have the vacation of your dreams.
See the best time to buy airline tickets and how to locate inexpensive flights for further travel tips. I also describe how I travel without worry by using Google Maps.
Allow AI to create personalized trip plans.
Your next vacation might be easier to plan using Google’s AI Overviews in Search. I have been using this tool to create customized travel plans for the locations I visit for more than a year, since it was first introduced in March 2024. For example, during my three days in Edinburgh last May, I requested Google to organize a trip that centered on bookstores.
Atlas of AI
The feature is currently growing. Google said last week that it intends to expand the functionality of AI Overviews in Search, enabling you to create daily itineraries for specific areas or whole nations in addition to cities. Simply provide a brief command, such as “make an itinerary for New Zealand with an emphasis on nature” or “make an itinerary for England with a focus on history.”
The AI uses information from a variety of sources, including reviews, images, and company profiles that users have uploaded to Google over time. You may then export your itinerary to Docs, Maps, or Gmail.
It’s crucial to keep in mind that AI-generated responses are not always accurate and may even be made up. In the event that the AI tool is producing misleading information, hallucinating, or getting findings from questionable sources, you should carefully fact-check the material with knowledgeable sources. Check out this article by CNET’s Katie Collins if you need a case study. She examined the precision of many AI technologies in relation to a place she is familiar with.
Get ideas for trips from Gemini
Planning a trip may be very stressful, particularly when visiting a new location. When that occurs, I use Google’s AI chatbot, Gemini. Since Google Maps was updated in the fall of 2024, Gemini can recommend places to eat and things to do while traveling.
If it’s raining, you may also ask it to recommend inexpensive things to do in a city or a nation you’re visiting. Gemini curates customized recommendations based on Google evaluations and displays them as pins on the map. This function eases the planning process, lowering stress and assisting in the discovery of customized choices.
I occasionally ask the same travel-related questions of other chatbots, such as ChatGPT and Claude, and receive responses that are comparable. Did I mention that you should always double-check the information provided by an AI chatbot?
Make a travel agent using AI
Additionally, you may experiment with Gemini’s Gems feature, which enables you to personalize Gemini to create your own AI specialist. Gems are specialized Geminis that assist you with recurring activities or research insights. This implies that you may use a travel planner like Gem to help you decide where to go, where to eat in a new location, or what to bring on a particular trip.
Gems is now available on Google without a membership. You must be logged into Gemini Apps in order to utilize this function. Then, you may use the desktop “Gems manager” to build a custom Gem.
In order to test this functionality, I made a “travel agent” Gem and put out the primary goals and features of the Gem as well as the type of answer I wanted it to provide.
Gem of a Gemini Travel Agent
“I’ve always wanted to island-hop around the Caribbean islands,” I said when I asked my Gem to make a 10-day itinerary for island hopping in the Caribbean. Please design a 10-day plan that includes visits to the main islands and the most popular sites. In response, my Gem inquired about my preferred trip period of year, budget, and speed. Based on my answers, Travel Agent Gem combined my love of history, beaches, and environment to create a 10-day itinerary that included stops in Barbados, St. Lucia, and Puerto Rico.
Screenshot of AI Gemini Gem
Without hiring a costly travel agency, you may create your ideal fantasy trip for free with Gem. These AI technologies can be useful, but they cannot take the place of a true expert’s counsel and knowledge.
Let AI arrange screenshots of potential trips.
Like me, you probably have thousands of photos from travel blogs, Pinterest, TikTok, and social media in your Photos app. I like to take screenshots of restaurants, museums, parks, and other places I’ve always wanted to see while I’m planning a trip. I have to sort through what seems like an infinite number of screenshots toward the end.
Google revealed a new feature last week that would make it easier to plan your trip: the Maps app will be able to recognize places in your screenshots and store them to a list. This tool looks for text that mentions certain areas in screenshots, shows those locations on a map, and allows you to study, save, or share them.
US iOS users may now utilize this snapshot list function, and Android users will soon be able to do the same.
Look for the most affordable hotels.
I truly don’t have any trouble booking flights. regardless of the retail price. But making hotel reservations? That’s a painful expense, huh? Particularly considering that the largest expense of any vacation is typically hotel.
Every day, I search Google Flights for the most affordable flights. (No, I check it every day, and when rates drop, I have email alerts set for over 15 places.) Google is now bringing similar magic to hotel reservations.
You may now monitor rates for the dates and location you have chosen at google.com/hotels. Similar to Google Flights, you can easily activate the price-tracking feature beneath the search parameters. If costs for any hotels in your search results decrease noticeably, you’ll be notified via email. In addition to the region you’re looking at on the map, you can also specify filters like beach access or star rating.
Google Hotels screenshot
I’ve set up alerts for early May hotel rates in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Choose an AI-powered Lens tour guide screenshot.
Lens makes it simple to translate signs or menus.
Google
Alright, this isn’t a brand-new Google travel tool, but it’s still an excellent one that can greatly simplify travel. The language barrier is one of my main worries while visiting a foreign nation. My worst dread is becoming lost in a different city and not knowing how to get help. These anxieties can be allayed by Google’s Lens function.
Learning more about the city you’re visiting, your surroundings, and the local language is simple with Lens. It may assist you in navigating a foreign language by rapidly and reliably translating menus, maps, street signs, and more. To see the translated text appear on your screen, simply aim your camera and hit the translate filter.
Lens can swiftly recognize objects or buildings in addition to decoding text. Let’s say you notice a group of individuals lingering near a monument or a pair of doors. If so, all you have to do is point your camera and ask, “What are these for?” and Lens will produce an AI Overview that includes details and connections to other resources.
For English inquiries, AI Overviews in Lens (and Circle to Search) are now accessible. This functionality will soon be extended to include inquiries in Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, and Indonesian.