Travelers’ Reliance on AI Prompts Google to Enhance Search, Maps and Tools

Starting this week, Google is rolling out a slew of new travel features across its product line to keep users from defaulting to artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots to help with vacation planning as competition intensifies.

Google has added new features for vacation planning to Search, Maps, Lens and Gemini, according to a Thursday (March 27) company blog post. The features including getting new ideas for trips with a personal AI assistant, tracking prices of hotels and automatically saving locations the user wants to visit.

“Travel is a key vertical for Google, as it drives high-intent searches across hotels, restaurants, flights, attractions and local experiences — categories with strong monetization,” wrote Justin Post, an analyst for Bank of America Global Research, in a research note sent to clients.

The new Google features “will expand the volume and diversity of search queries, allowing Google to deliver more relevant results and target more high-value commercial content,” Post said.

“We think the integrations also enhance Google’s ability to compete with emerging AI search platforms, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and others, which have been improving travel planning capabilities,” the analyst said.

Google’s travel enhancements come as users increasingly turn to AI assistants to help them with vacation plans. According to a PYMNTS Intelligence report, “At Your Service: Generative AI Arrives in Travel and Hospitality,” 52% of respondents surveyed expect AI planning assistance.

AI startup Perplexity is taking it a step further by announcing partnerships with Tripadvisor and Selfbook. Travelers can now book hotels within Perplexity, wrote Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas in a LinkedIn post. Srinivas also said the company will soon announce details on discounts on hotel bookings offered within Perplexity’s AI chatbot.

The new capability is part of Perplexity’s new “answer modes” feature to enhance search for travel, shopping, places, images, videos and jobs, Srinivas said.

“Going beyond answering a wall of text” by adding images, videos and enabling financial transactions “is a necessary step for being a daily-usage product and taking on Google,” Srinivas said.

Travel companies themselves are using GenAI to help travelers with their vacation planning, further minimizing the need for Google searches. For example, Booking.com is using OpenAI’s AI models for its own solutions.

Read more: Seamless Journeys: AI’s Rising Role in Coordinating Consumer Travel

Google Fights Back With New Travel Features

Google is fighting back with enhancements to its travel features.

“The new AI features have the potential to drive incremental queries on Google’s platform by engaging users earlier in the decision-making process,” BofA analyst Post said. “Rather than transactional keywords like ’cheap flights to Paris,’ users can potentially now ask broader questions such as ’suggest scenic road trip routes in California.’”

Starting this week, Google is rolling out the following travel features:

AI Overviews in search is adding more cities and countries.

Travelers can get trip ideas for more cities, not just main metropolitan areas like New York or Rome. Users can also get trip information for specific regions or entire countries.

For example, they can ask AI to “create an itinerary for Costa Rica with a focus on nature.” They will get photos and reviews from other users and see locations on a map. Users can export the information and share them through Gmail or Google Docs — or save them as a list on Google Maps for on-the-go access.

Travelers can now track hotel prices.

Google Flights is a popular way to find and track flights. Now, Google is bringing the same functionality to hotel prices for specific dates and cities. When searching for hotels, a price-tracking toggle will show up for users to enable. Google will send an email if prices drop significantly.

Google Maps automatically identifies places that interest users.

Users planning travel often take screenshots of places they’d like to visit, whether through social media, news articles or travel blogs. Google Maps can automatically identify these places and organizes them in a list. Places users saved will show up on Google Maps.

Gemini now lets users create their own AI expert for free.

Google is now offering users free use of “Gems,” a tool for creating their personal AI expert. For example, they can create their custom trip planner AI assistant, then ask it to help them pick a new vacation destination, find things to do and even what to pack for the trip.

Google Lens is adding more languages.

Through the Google app, Google Lens lets travelers identify things of interest around them, such as ornately carved wooden doors in Florence, Italy. It can also be used to translate signs, menus, flyers and other text in another language. Lens is planning to add capabilities in Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.