Travelers' Reliance on AI Prompts Google to Enhance Tools
Google is enhancing travel features across Search, Maps, Lens, and Gemini to stay competitive with AI-powered travel planning tools like those offered by Perplexity, which is rapidly expanding its capabilities and partnerships. The new Google tools enable expanded AI-generated itineraries, hotel price tracking, automatic location saving, and personalized travel assistants, all aimed at engaging users earlier in the planning process and keeping them within Google’s ecosystem. As generative AI reshapes the travel industry, Google is racing to maintain relevance and advertising value by adding richer content, broader search capabilities, and customization. Starting this week, Google is rolling out a slew of new travel features across its product line to keep users from defaulting to AI-powered chatbots for vacation planning as competition intensifies.
Enhanced Features
Google has added new features for vacation planning to Search, Maps, Lens, and Gemini. These features include getting new ideas for trips with a personal AI assistant, tracking prices of hotels, and automatically saving locations the user wants to visit. According to a Thursday (March 27) company blog post, these enhancements aim to drive high-intent searches and deliver more relevant results for users, ultimately increasing engagement and commercial content delivery. The integrations also enhance Google’s ability to compete with emerging AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others in the travel industry.
AI Assistants in Travel
Users are increasingly turning to AI assistants to help them with vacation plans, with 52% of respondents surveyed expecting AI planning assistance according to a PYMNTS Intelligence report. Companies like Perplexity are partnering with platforms like Tripadvisor and Selfbook to offer seamless hotel bookings within their AI chatbots, further streamlining the planning process for travelers.
Competition and Innovation
Travel companies are leveraging AI to assist travelers with vacation planning, reducing the reliance on traditional search engines like Google. For instance, Booking.com is using OpenAI’s models for its solutions. In response, Google is enhancing its travel features to engage users earlier in the decision-making process, offering trip ideas for various cities, tracking hotel prices, saving locations, and providing personalized AI assistants through Gems.
Google Lens
Through the Google app, Google Lens allows travelers to identify points of interest, translate text in different languages, and explore new destinations. Lens is continually evolving to include more languages and features, enhancing the travel experience for users.
