I Got a Sneak Peek at Google’s AI Travel Planner

Which is now live.

Last week I got a sneak peek from the Google team of some of their new AI features. I had a favorite tool from the ones they shared, and it’s now live: custom travel itineraries in Google search.

You can now type into Google’s search box where you are traveling to and what you want to do, and an entire sample itinerary is created for you in seconds. It appears as the first result under the search box. The tool is free to use and is available for English language queries in the U.S. on mobile and desktop.

It looks like this:

I tried different search queries, and the most effective structure seems to be the one Google used as an example: “create an itinerary for ______ with a focus on _____.”

I tried it with a bunch of different trips I’ve taken in the past:

• create an itinerary for Kenya with a focus on animals

• create an itinerary for NYC with a focus on nature

• create an itinerary for Germany with a focus on kids’ activities

All those prompts above gave me a default trip length from 5-7 days. Then I asked it to create an itinerary for the mid-sized town I live in with a focus on food, and it gave me a 3-day trip, so it does seem to shrink down the trip length for a smaller place.

You can export the itinerary to text, Gmail, Google Docs, or even Google Maps, where you can then edit for your specific needs.

I can see the Google Maps export being especially useful if you want to do a food crawl. For example, I asked it to “create an itinerary for Boston with a focus on cupcakes” and I could see myself exporting the suggestions to Google Maps and then hopping around the city, just following the Google Maps pins with minimal edits.

Overall, I think it’s a helpful, cool tool that gives you a good starting point to plan a trip. And now I want to go to Boston for a cupcake crawl.

-Molly Beck