With travel being one of my favorite things to do, it can be overwhelming to plan a dream trip. I’ve got dozens of trips under my belt, both domestic and international, and yet I still find the process of planning and booking stressful. However, that’s where AI comes in – numerous AI tools can help with travel planning, from general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT to Booking.com’s AI Trip Planner. According to a survey conducted in March 2025, nearly half of all Americans (44%) plan to take a trip that requires a flight or hotel this summer. This means millions of Americans are gathering their passports, creating itineraries, and gearing up to travel over the summer. If you’re one of those people, you may be looking for help with your trip planning. That’s where AI can assist. Several key Google AI features can help you plan and enjoy your ultimate dream trip. Google announced several new AI features and updates for its portfolio of apps and services, including Search, Maps, Lens, and Gemini. These updates can help you create customized travel itineraries, get travel inspiration, and book affordable flights and hotels. AI Overviews in Search can make planning your next trip simpler. This tool was initially announced in March 2024 and has been used by me for over a year to generate personalized travel itineraries for the cities I’m visiting. For instance, I asked Google to plan a bookstore-focused tour of Edinburgh when I was there for three days last May. Now, the feature is expanding to allow users to create day-by-day itineraries for more than just cities but for distinct regions or entire countries. Just type in a quick command like “create an itinerary for England with a focus on history” or “create an itinerary for New Zealand with a focus on nature.” The AI draws on data from a wide range of sources, such as reviews, photos, and business profiles submitted to Google by people over time. You can export your itinerary to Gmail, Docs, or Maps, and use the information to book your trip or plan your activities. However, it’s always essential to remember not to take AI-generated answers at face value since they can make mistakes and even generate false information. It’s crucial to fact-check the information with expert sources. Another AI tool that can help with travel planning is Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot. Since the fall 2024 update to Google Maps, Gemini can suggest activities and dining options for your travels. You can ask it to find budget-friendly activities in a city or things to do in a country you’re visiting when it’s raining. Gemini uses Google reviews to curate personalized suggestions and shows them as pins on the map. This feature makes planning easier, helping you discover tailored options and reducing stress. You can also use Gemini’s Gems feature to create a customized version of Gemini that helps you tackle repetitive tasks or insight when researching. The Gems feature lets you set up a travel planner Gem to help you choose a travel destination, find restaurants in a new city, or what to pack for a given vacation. Google is now offering Gems without a subscription. To use this feature, you must be signed in to Gemini Apps, and then you can create a custom Gem through the “Gems manager” on the desktop. When I experimented with this feature, I created a “travel agent” Gem and wrote down instructions for the Gem’s main objectives and capabilities and the style and tone of response I wanted from it. I asked my Gem to create a 10-day itinerary for island-hopping around the Caribbean with the query, “I’ve always wanted to island-hop around the Caribbean islands. Please create an itinerary (for about 10 days), hitting the major islands and biggest attractions.”
My Gem responded by asking me what time of year I wished to travel, my budget, and my ideal traveling pace. From my responses, Travel Agent Gem planned a 10-day trip around Puerto Rico, St. Lucia, and Barbados, blending my interests in beaches, nature, and history. If you’re anything like me, your Photos app is filled with thousands of images from social media, Pinterest, TikTok, and travel blogs. When travel planning, I like to screenshot photos of restaurants, museums, parks, and other attractions I’m dying to visit. However, by the end, I have seemingly endless screenshots to sift through. Last week, Google announced a new feature to the Maps app that can identify locations in your screenshots and save them to a list, making it easier to organize your travel plans. The feature scans screenshots for text mentioning specific places, displays those locations on the map, and lets you review, save, or share them. This screenshot list feature is now available for iOS users in the US, with Android support coming soon. Booking hotels can also be challenging. I have no problem booking flights, but booking hotels is an expense that hurts. However, Google is bringing that magic to booking hotels. At google.com/hotels, you’ll see a new option to track prices for your selected dates and destination. Just like on Google Flights, you can toggle the price-tracking option below the search filters, and you’ll receive an email notification if prices drop significantly for any hotels in your search results. You can even set filters, such as star rating or beach access, as well as the area you’re viewing on the map. This feature is a game-changer for booking hotels, making it easier to find the best deals. Another feature that can make travel much easier is Google’s Lens. This feature makes it easy to learn more about the city you’re visiting, your surroundings, and the local language. It can quickly and accurately translate street signs, maps, menus, and more to help you navigate a foreign language. Just point your camera, tap the translate filter, and watch the words translate on your screen. Lens can decipher more than just text – it can also quickly identify objects or buildings. Suppose you see a crowd of people hovering around a statue or a set of doors. In that case, you can simply point your camera and ask something along the lines of “What are these for?” and Lens will generate an AI Overview with information and links to additional resources. AI Overviews in Lens (and Circle to Search) are now available for English queries. Soon, this feature will expand to facilitate queries in Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. In conclusion, AI is revolutionizing the way we plan and enjoy our trips. With numerous AI tools available, such as Google’s AI Overviews in Search, Gemini, and Lens, you can create customized itineraries, get travel inspiration, book affordable flights and hotels, and navigate foreign languages. By utilizing these AI tools, you can simplify your summer travel planning and make your trip more enjoyable.