Google announced on Monday that it is rolling out new artificial intelligence-powered travel booking and planning features to its search capabilities. The tech giant is not only expanding the coverage of its AI-powered “Flight Deals” tool, it’s also adding travel plan organization capabilities to its AI-powered “Canvas” tool and opening up smart agent booking capabilities to more users.
As early as August this year, Google had taken the lead in launching the “Flight Deals” tool in the United States, Canada and India. Now, the company is integrating the AI-powered search tool into the global version of Google Flights to help users quickly find affordable travel destinations.
When users use this tool, they only need to describe their travel destination, time and method, and "Flight Deals" will use artificial intelligence technology to filter and display the most cost-effective travel options.
Currently, the "Flight Offer" tool is gradually covering more than 200 countries and regions around the world, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea. At the same time, the tool also adds support for more than 60 languages.
As for the new features of the artificial intelligence mode, Google said that users can now make travel plans with the help of the built-in "Canvas" tool. The Canvas tool was originally designed to build learning plans and organize information across multiple sessions in the sidebar, but now it can also help users plan their upcoming trips.
Users simply tell the AI model the type of trip they want and then select the “Create with Canvas” option to activate the feature.
Google explained in a blog post: "When selected, the Canvas sidebar instantly generates a travel plan that integrates real-time search data for flights and hotels, details from Google Maps such as photos and reviews, and relevant content from various websites around the world. You will see recommendations that are tailored to your needs, such as hotel comparisons based on price and amenities, or restaurant and activity suggestions optimized based on travel time from your accommodation."
Users can then ask follow-up questions to get advice on “trade-offs” — such as choosing between hotels that are “close to a brunch spot they want to try, but a little further from a hiking trail they want to explore.”
Currently, the "Canvas" travel planning function is only available to US users on the desktop, and users must have enabled the artificial intelligence mode experiment in "Labs".
In addition, Google announced that it will open the "intelligent agent capabilities" of artificial intelligence mode to more users. Earlier this year, Google said that users who have turned on the "Lab" function can obtain auxiliary support for restaurant reservations, event ticket purchases, and beauty and health service appointments in artificial intelligence mode. Now, the company is extending this feature to all US users.
Users can make dinner reservations based on a variety of preferences, such as the number of people gathering, date, time, location, and favorite cuisine. The artificial intelligence model then searches across multiple reservation platforms to find real-time availability of restaurants that meet the needs and generates a filtered list of options for users to choose from.
Google said that in the future, it will also implement the function of "directly completing flight and hotel bookings within artificial intelligence mode." By then, users only need to describe their needs, compare different flights or hotels, and browse information such as itineraries, prices, room photos, facilities, and reviews.