Google Rolls Out Smarter Travel Planning Tools for Maps, Search & Hotels

Google’s cooking up some smarter travel tools this week, and they’re actually pretty useful—especially if your trip planning looks like a mess of screenshots buried in your gallery.

The big one? A new Maps feature that scans your screenshots and pulls out place names using Gemini AI. It then pins them on a map, so you can save and organize them into a sharable list. No more digging through 800 images trying to remember where that beach bar in Barcelona was. The catch: it only works if there’s visible text. It’s not scanning the image itself—just the words in it.

This “screenshot list” feature is rolling out to iOS users in the US first. Android folks? You’re stuck in limbo for now, but it’s “coming soon.”

Search is also getting an upgrade. Google’s AI Overviews can now help build entire vacation itineraries using prompts like “create a vacation itinerary for Greece that focuses on history.” You’ll get photo suggestions, user reviews, a map of locations, and options to save everything directly into Google Maps—or export to Docs or Gmail.

This is rolling out now for English users in the US across mobile and desktop. Think of it as a trip planner that doesn’t yell at you for changing your mind.

Lastly, Google’s price drop alerts—previously a Flights-only perk—are now coming to hotel searches. You can toggle alerts for your travel dates and get notified when prices dip. It even takes stuff like beach access and hotel rating into account. Pretty helpful when you’re trying to book a last-minute escape without burning through your savings.

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