Travel doesn’t really start at the airport. It starts weeks earlier—in those small moments when you’re imagining the trip, comparing options, wondering whether you’ll splurge on the hotel or save for that perfect meal. That early stage of discovery has always been messy: endless tabs, scattered notes, half-forgotten flight searches, and a growing suspicion that you might be missing a better deal somewhere.

This week, Google decided to clean all that up.

In a fresh wave of updates, the company expanded its AI Mode experiment and upgraded its travel search features — and the changes land squarely in that pre-trip planning chaos. The focus: helping you build itineraries faster, hunt down cheaper flights, and even start booking directly from Search, all with far fewer clicks and far more context.

Google’s message is clear: if travel planning has always been a puzzle, AI just found the missing corner pieces.

A New Workspace for Planning: Canvas in AI Mode

Google is leaning heavily into conversational trip building, and the biggest sign of that is Canvas in AI Mode.

Think of Canvas as a digital workspace that behaves more like a smart travel buddy than a search tool. You can toss out a prompt like:
“Planning a ski weekend near Geneva with good food and easy slopes,”
or
“I want a quiet beach escape somewhere warm and not too crowded.”

From there, you get a side-panel layout that looks less like a list of search results and more like a curated plan: hotel comparisons, flight options, what’s nearby, and suggestions for things to see, do or taste. You can tweak everything—the neighborhood, the timing, the vibe—and Canvas adjusts the itinerary in real time.

It’s currently live on desktop for users in the U.S. who opted into Labs, but expect international expansion. Google tends to test quietly, then scale fast when features stick.

What makes this interesting isn’t the interface; it’s the shift in behavior. We’re moving away from search-as-input and closer to “planning-as-conversation.” And Google is betting that’s exactly how travelers want to interact.

Flight Deals Now Global—And Multilingual

Another major update is the global rollout of Flight Deals inside Google Flights. The idea is simple but powerful: instead of making travelers enter dates, airports, and filters, AI scans for cheap, relevant, or interesting options across different destinations and travel windows.

It’s now available in 200+ countries and territories, supports more than 60 languages, and, more importantly, fits naturally into how people talk about trips. You don’t have to know when you can travel. You don’t even need a destination in mind. If you type, “Where can I fly in November for under €300?” or “Show me sunny destinations from Frankfurt this winter,” the system works it out.

For flexible travelers—the “give me inspiration and I’ll pack” crowd—this is a massive time-saver. And it’s clearly designed to compete with platforms like Skyscanner’s Everywhere, Kiwi’s flexible search, and Hopper’s deal-prediction engine.

The difference? Google already sits at the center of your search habits. That’s an advantage even strong competitors can’t replicate.

Agentic AI Enters the Chat: Reservations Without the Scrolling

Here’s where things get a little futuristic.

Google is expanding what it calls agentic AI—essentially an AI system that does tasks for you across multiple platforms. Right now, U.S. users in AI Mode can request restaurant reservations based on their preferences, with the system pulling availability from OpenTable, Resy and Tock. It also scans for event tickets and local appointments.

This means you can say, “Find me a dinner reservation for two in Chicago tomorrow around 8 p.m., somewhere with vegetarian options,” and the AI does the legwork. No apps, no endless refreshing, no juggling different platforms.

Google says it’s working on doing the same for flights and hotels. If that happens, we’re looking at the biggest shift in online travel booking since metasearch went mainstream.

If travel planning is a funnel, agentic AI isn’t just narrowing it—it’s starting to move travelers from planning to booking in a single conversation.

Industry Partnerships Keep the Ecosystem Real

Google isn’t building this alone. Partnerships with Booking.com, Expedia, Marriott, IHG, Wyndham, and others allow AI Mode to tap into deeper layers of pricing, amenities, and availability. Hotels and OTAs have always guarded data carefully, but everyone sees which way the market is moving: if AI is the new front door for travel planning, you want your brand visible inside that door.

It also solves a credibility problem. Travelers trust Google Maps and Google Flights, but booking details still depend on suppliers. The more accurate that puzzle becomes, the more likely users will finalize transactions inside Google’s ecosystem — a point competitors are watching closely.

The Bigger Trend: Natural Language Is Becoming the New Search Bar

Google framed these updates as an efficiency boost, but the shift goes deeper. This is part of a broader movement shaping the travel tech landscape right now:

Travel planning is becoming conversational.
Instead of structured queries (“Barcelona hotels under €200, near beach”), users can describe intent (“I want a quiet hotel near the water but not too far from good tapas”), and AI translates that into structured results.

Spontaneous travel is on the rise.
When Flight Deals and agentic AI surface last-minute options you can book instantly, barriers drop. Industry reports from Hopper, Kiwi.com, and Booking.com all show increases in “impulse travel”—especially for younger travelers.

Travel platforms are converging.
What Google is doing mirrors moves from players like Airbnb (AI itinerary drafts), Trip.com (AI dynamic packaging), and Hopper (AI deal prediction and fintech tools). But Google enters with unmatched data scale: Maps, photos, reviews, timelines, location data, search intent, and YouTube travel content all feed its ecosystem.

That’s why Google’s updates matter: they don’t exist in isolation. They plug into everything travelers already use.

Conclusion: Google Wants To Be the Operating System of Travel—and It’s Getting Close

What’s happening here isn’t just another round of search upgrades. Google is positioning itself as the single environment where inspiration, planning, and booking happen in one continuous flow—something no OTA, metasearch engine, or AI startup has fully cracked.

Platforms like Skyscanner and Kayak excel at flight flexibility. Airbnb does immersive browsing. Hopper predicts prices. Trip.com is building fast with AI chat-based travel agents. But none of these players sit at the crossroads of everyday digital life the way Google does.

With agentic AI, Google is quietly moving into territory traditionally owned by OTAs. With global flight deals, it’s challenging metasearch. With Canvas, it’s nudging into itinerary builders like Wanderlog, TripIt, and GuideGeek. And with its massive partner ecosystem, it’s ensuring accuracy—the one thing that can break trust instantly in travel.

Reliable sources such as McKinsey’s 2024 travel AI outlook and Amadeus’ Travel Trends 2025 both point to the same direction: the next era of travel planning will be powered by AI that understands intent, automates logistics, and removes friction. Google’s latest rollout fits that trajectory perfectly.

If Google continues on this path—and especially if flight and hotel booking via agentic AI becomes a reality—it’s not just improving trip planning. It’s redefining the entire digital travel funnel.

For travelers, that means smoother planning.
For brands, tighter competition.
And for the travel tech industry, a new benchmark to meet.