Discover the trending summer travel searches with Google Trends expert Craig Ewer. From the rising demand for kids’ passports and romantic getaways to the latest in AI-powered itinerary tools, get the inside scoop on making your next trip effortless with Google’s latest tech.
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Summer Travel Transcript
Announcer – 0:00: Mason Vera Paine.
Mason Paine – 0:01: Summer travel season is right around the corner and Google’s chief technology and trends expert Craig Ewer joins me to share travel hacks and explain how AI tools can help make planning your trip a whole lot easier. Thanks for joining me Craig.
Craig Ewer – 0:15: Glad to be here. Thank you.
Mason Paine – 0:16: Tell me, what have been some of the trends when it comes to travel so far?
Craig Ewer – 0:21: Well, a lot of people are looking for help with their travel plans on Google and in fact we’ve seen a number of all time high searches this year. One of those is kids passports. So it looks like people are really interested in traveling abroad with their families, also couples trips. So romantic getaways seem to be top of mind. We’ve also seen that cheap summer vacations are trending right now. So I do think people are interested in traveling on a budget.
Mason Paine – 0:45: Has road trips been something that’s pinging high?
Craig Ewer – 0:48: You know, we always see lots of interest in road trip and in fact there are several national parks that are seeing a lot of searches. Yellowstone, Yosemite and Glacier national park are all top trending national parks this year.
Mason Paine – 1:01: Now when it comes to any type of traveling, you have to plan something. Is there any particular way that Google helps you plan for these trips?
Craig Ewer – 1:09: Yes. You know, you can actually go right to Google, search and type in something like create an itinerary for Costa Rica that’s four days long and has a focus on nature. And you’re going to get right in the search results an AI generated sample itinerary that’ll lay out day by day suggestions for where to eat, places to see, tours you can take. And we show all of that on a map. So it’s really easy to click around and see photos, reviews, that type of thing. And then from there it’s really up to you how you want to make the trip your own.
Mason Paine – 1:37: Is it something that you’ve tried recently? I’m just curious if you have experience with it.
Craig Ewer – 1:42: Definitely. You know, I’m actually looking to go to Mexico around Labor Day and Oaxaca in particular. I said I’m going to Oaxaca for about four or five nights. I’m really interested in food and the local culture and immediately I got a bunch of great suggestions. And then from there, you know, you click out these websites, these travel blogs, you can get really great expert advice that way. Another tool that’s worth mentioning is Gemini, which is Google’s personal AI assistant and that’s more of a chat experience and you can get really specific there with your questions as well. So one thing I love to do is get advice on my packing list, you can say, I’m going to these different locations over the course of a week, let’s say. And then say, hey, you know, tell me what should I pack to account for all the different weather I might encounter? And we’ll give you all of that advice right in one easy place. So it makes it really simple to get inspiration and help with your planning.
Mason Paine – 2:31: I’m so happy you talked about Gemini. What’s the difference between Gemini and Google Assistant?
Craig Ewer – 2:36: Gemini is really AI powered. Right. It’s the future of what we’re doing in terms of giving you assistance with AI. So Gemini does have the ability to interact with voice through Gemini Live. And then there’s also that conversational experience. And I believe we are at this stage starting to introduce Gemini into some of those voice assistant experiences. So if you have NEST device at home, for instance, you are able to actually interact with Gemini through that interface.
Mason Paine – 3:03: Thank you for explaining that because I was getting confused. I’m like, aren’t they the same thing?
Craig Ewer – 3:08: We’re really sort of taking the assistant to the next level. With AI, Gemini is capable of understanding natural language. You can almost talk to it the same way that you might talk to a human and really just add all the detail and sort had this really easy back and forth.
Mason Paine – 3:22: Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Going back to travel, I do a lot of road trips with my father and we’ll go from like Chicago to Texas or Chicago to California. And a lot of times we’re looking for someplace to eat. And I’m trying to do a quick Internet search, trying to find something really close to us. And in natural language, Gemini, that would be more intuitive to what I’m trying to do on the fly in the middle of a trip.
Craig Ewer – 3:49: Yes, yes, absolutely. You could use Gemini that way. I should also mention there’s a great feature on Google Maps. If you’re in that navigation mode, you can tap the magnifying glass icon and actually search along your route. We know your start point and your end point and you can say that you’re looking for a place to stop and get cheeseburgers, let’s say along the way.
Mason Paine – 4:09: Yeah, definitely. Trying to find the best place in the area. Or maybe one of those food challenge places are always. I get a kick out of those.
Craig Ewer – 4:19: Yeah. And you know, with Google Maps we have information on over 250 million places in the real world. So you’re getting all of that really up to date business information and all the reviews and the photos that come with it. So that’s A really critical part of any travel and trip planning, being able to access all that on the ground info.
Mason Paine – 4:38: Oh, that’s nice. With it being so intuitive and so fast. Are the prices, do they reflect in that as well?
Craig Ewer – 4:45: Well, these tools are free, so you can use search for free. Of course, Gemini has a free tier that’s open to anyone to use. You know, we want to make accessing information and getting this type of help as simple as possible. So there’s really no barrier to getting started.
Mason Paine – 4:59: For someone who doesn’t use AI, how would you help them navigate this? If they’re trying to do a plan.
Craig Ewer – 5:07: From scratch, you can really just type out exactly what you’re looking for. You can ask detailed questions and you’re going to get some help from AI right in your search results. And the same is true for Gemini. The difference between search and Gemini is that search is really focused on connecting you to the world’s information, whether that’s through websites or information about products or local businesses. Gemini is more of your conversational chat experience. You know, with Gemini, I would say the more detail that you can give up front, the better it’s going to be. So there’s really no limit to what you can enter in there in terms of specifying, hey, I’m traveling with this number of people, we have these type of interests. It can take all of that into account and then pull together this really helpful AI response. So I would say when you’re talking to Gemini or now searching, all you have to do is really just specify exactly what you’re looking for. You don’t need to translate it into short keywords. You can actually just type out your full question with all the details, all the nuance and you can get that help really quickly.
Mason Paine – 6:05: So Gemini would help with planning your itinerary versus searching would help you do the finer points of your hotels and locations and things like that.
Craig Ewer – 6:15: You know, there’s a little bit of both. You can get help with your itinerary through search or gemiini. Gemiini really is more conversational and better at brainstorming in some regards. So you can ask for help sort of a more broad ranging way. Ultimately we want to meet people where they are with these tools. A lot of people already know search, they love search. So we, we’re bringing that AI helpfulness right into search. But we also know that this sort of chat style interface is becoming increasingly popular, so we offer that with Gemini as well.
Mason Paine – 6:44: Yeah, I’m just trying to figure out like, where’s Google going with this? Because I happen to like a little bit of both. But at some point, which one’s going to take the lead, Gemini or the search? You get what I mean?
Craig Ewer – 6:58: Sure. We’re in very early days with this technology. Certainly AI has been part of search and a lot of Google for many years. But now with Gemini and search, we do see people with different needs using tools. And I myself use them interchangeably for various things. It’s also worth pointing out that we have been testing for some time a new feature in search called AI Mode. And this is something that you can opt into through our Search Lab program. But AI Mode allows you to actually have that back and forth conversation in a search interface. And so it can actually bring you helpful web links and some more of that local business information I was talking about. So kind of a nice blend bringing together the best of our Gemini models with the real time information we have on search.
Mason Paine – 7:41: Well, Craig, thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate you being here. For those listening, where can they find information about everything that we talked about?
Craig Ewer – 7:50: So if you want to read the latest updates, you can go to blog.google.com to access search, you can head right to google.com, the Google search bar, and then Gemini, you can find at google.com/Gemini.
Announcer – 8:04: This has been the Mason Vera Paine Show. Thanks for listening.
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