5 tips for summer travel prep
Bullet points
- Get ready for summer travel with these AI-powered tools to help you plan and enjoy your trip.
- AI Overviews in Search can help you create a day-by-day itinerary for your trip.
- Track hotel prices and get alerts when they drop for your chosen dates and destination.
- Use Google Maps to save places you find in screenshots and share them with friends.
- Ask Gemini for travel inspiration and create a personalized AI travel planner.
Basic explainer
Google is making it easier to plan your summer vacation! You can use Google Search to get ideas for trips, including day-by-day itineraries. You can also track hotel prices and get alerts when they drop. Google Maps can even help you organize your travel plans by turning screenshots of places you want to visit into lists. And, you can use Google's AI assistant, Gemini, to get travel inspiration and help with planning.
Summaries were generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental.Shakespeare-ish
To plan your summer trip, fear not, dear friend,
For Google's tools, a helping hand extend.
With AI Overviews, your journey's planned,
From city streets to regions, vast and grand.
Track hotel prices, save a precious dime,
And screenshots, turned to lists, will shine.
Gemini, your guide, with wisdom deep,
Will help you choose, your travel dreams to keep.
Lens, your translator, with a magic touch,
Will make your trip, a joy, and not so much,
A stressful quest, but rather, a delight,
So pack your bags, and travel with all your might!
Haiku-ish
Search, Maps, Lens,
AI guides your summer trip,
Plan with ease, explore.
Price tracking helps,
Gemini, your AI guide,
Gems for travel plans.
Lens, your AI friend,
Translates signs, menus too,
Explore with ease now.
Explore other styles:
Summer break will be here before you know it — so this is the time to start thinking about your next vacation. Check out these updates for Search, Maps, Lens and Gemini that’ll help you plan and enjoy the perfect trip.
1. Get trip ideas with AI Overviews in Search
Whether you have a destination in mind or you’re still exploring your options, AI Overviews in Search can already help you visualize your trip with a day-by-day itinerary for things to do and restaurants to enjoy. And starting this week, you can get trip ideas not just for cities like New York or Rome, but also for distinct regions or entire countries. Just search for something like “create an itinerary for Costa Rica with a focus on nature” to get started.
From there, you can explore photos and reviews contributed by other users and see locations on an expandable map. And when you’re ready, you can tap “Export” to share the recommendations through Docs or Gmail, or save them as a custom list in Google Maps for access on-the-go.
Planning trips with AI Overviews is available for English language queries in the U.S. on mobile and desktop — no Search Labs enrollment required.
2. Save money with hotel price tracking
If you already use Google Flights to get alerts on price drops, now you can do the same for hotels. If you’re browsing on google.com/hotels, you’ll see a new option to track prices for your chosen dates and destination.
Simply tap the price-tracking toggle below the search filters, and you’ll get an email if prices go down substantially for any of the hotels listed in the results. Our systems will account for the filters you’ve selected, like star rating or beach access, as well as the specific area you’re viewing on the map.
Hotel price tracking is launching globally this week on mobile and desktop browsers.
3. Turn your screenshots into plans with Google Maps
When you’re planning a getaway, you’re likely jotting down places you want to visit in a notes app, or doing research via social media, news articles and travel blogs to find the best spots to visit – and you’re probably grabbing plenty of screenshots in the process! But, we all know how easy it is for those photos to be forgotten in your camera roll.
Now, keeping track of these places is as easy as opening Maps. If you choose to turn on the new “screenshot” list, Gemini capabilities in Maps automatically identify places mentioned in your screenshots so you can review and save the ones you want to a helpful list. Places you save will show up on the map, and you can easily share the list with your travel buddies. This feature starts rolling out this week in the U.S. in English on iOS — and is coming soon to Android.
4. Ask Gemini for travel inspiration
Often, the hardest part of trip planning is getting started. Do you want a tropical vacation? OR should you visit a new big city? Turn to Gemini, your personal AI assistant, to get help with brainstorming and finding relevant information for your travel needs. You could ask something like “find me the cheapest flights to Europe and YouTube videos on what to do on a budget in each of those places.”
You can also try Gemini’s Gems feature — a tool that lets you customize Gemini to create your own personal AI expert — to set up your very own trip planner Gem. Now you have a travel guide at your fingertips to help you pick a destination, find restaurants in a new city or even suggest what to pack.
Results for illustrative purposes and may vary. Check responses for accuracy. Internet and browser for setup required. Available in select languages, and to users 18+.
Gems are also now available for everyone at no cost; go to the “Gems manager” on desktop to create a new Gem. Pro tip: Use the magic wand icon below the instructions text box so Gemini can help draft up your instructions; just start with a quick sentence and Gemini can take it from there.
5. Use Lens as your AI-powered tour guide
When you’re exploring somewhere new, Lens in the Google app (Android and iOS) makes it easy to learn more about your surroundings. Perhaps you’re visiting Florence and want to know the story behind the mysterious, wooden windows you’ve been seeing everywhere.
Just point your camera and ask something like “what are these used for?” You’ll get an AI Overview with information and insights, plus links to helpful resources on the web.
AI Overviews in Lens (and Circle to Search) are already available for English queries, and are expanding soon to Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, in most countries where AI Overviews are available.
Speaking of languages, Lens is also a great companion for translating everything from street signs to menus to flyers and more. Just point your camera, tap the translate filter and watch the words transform right before your eyes.
