Google expands AI-powered travel tools in Search

As the holiday travel season begins to ramp up, Google is rolling out a fresh wave of AI-driven features designed to make trip planning faster, easier, and more personalized. The company has upgraded Google Search’s AI Mode with new capabilities aimed at helping users organize itineraries, compare prices, and even make reservations—all without leaving the search interface.

A central part of this update is an enhanced version of Canvas, the planning workspace available within AI Mode. Google has reimagined Canvas as a more intuitive travel companion, capable of generating detailed trip plans tailored to each user’s needs. Travelers can now input essentials such as their destination, length of stay, group size, and any specific interests or constraints. In response, Canvas assembles a cohesive itinerary that appears in a dedicated side panel, pulling data from real-time search results, flight schedules, and hotel availability.

What makes this iteration of Canvas particularly useful is its emphasis on practicality. The tool doesn’t simply list options—it contextualizes them. Hotel recommendations come with price comparisons across major booking platforms, while suggested activities display estimated travel times from the user’s accommodation. This creates a planning environment that feels more like a personal travel assistant than a standard search experience.

For now, the upgraded Canvas and AI-powered itinerary builder are accessible only on desktop devices in the United States and limited to users who have joined the AI Mode experiment through Google Labs. Still, Google suggests that broader availability may follow once the system is refined.

Travel planning through AI Mode extends beyond itineraries. Google is also expanding Flight Deals, an AI-based feature introduced earlier in the year across the United States, Canada, and India. Built into Google Flights, Flight Deals allows users to find low-cost airfare by simply describing what they’re looking for in natural language. Queries like “cheap weekend flights to sunny destinations in March” or “affordable round trip to Tokyo next month” produce curated results driven by AI pattern recognition.

Flight Deals is now entering a major global rollout, scaling to more than 200 countries and supporting over 60 languages. This expansion includes major markets such as the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, among others. Google’s ambition is to make its conversational search experience a universal tool for travelers, regardless of their location or language preferences.

The company also revealed that it is partnering with travel platforms to integrate booking capabilities directly into AI Mode. In the near future, users will be able not only to search for flights and hotels but also to complete their reservations without leaving the AI interface. This would include follow-up questions—such as adjusting dates, comparing airlines, or checking cancellation policies—streamlined into a single conversational flow.

Beyond travel, Google continues to expand the agentic abilities of AI Mode. These features are designed to handle tasks that typically require manual searching across multiple sites. With agentic assistance, AI Mode can track down restaurant reservations, secure tickets to concerts or shows, and locate available times for local wellness services such as spa appointments or yoga classes. After gathering options that match the user’s stated preferences, the system produces a curated list with direct links to complete each booking.

Agentic restaurant booking is already becoming available to AI Mode users in the United States. Meanwhile, agentic support for event tickets and wellness appointments remains exclusive to Google Labs participants in the US, though Google indicates that further expansion is planned.