+ 321 others joined this month
👋 Did you find value in this article?
A genuine comment can brighten someone's day and makes a big difference in our online community.
Travel Massive is about sharing knowledge and new ideas. Contribute your feedback or appreciation in the comments below.
If you like this content, then give this post an upvote.
A genuine comment can brighten someone's day and makes a difference. If you like this content, then contribute your feedback or upvote this post.
Comments
Google has shipped a ton of new consumer products and services this week as part of their annual Google I/O Conference — here's my key takeaways for travel and tourism.
Below is a quick summary of new products that I feel are relevant to travel and tourism — either for consumers and travelers, or for tools for the travel industry and marketers.
→ 👓 Android XR Glasses: Smart glasses with speakers, camera, and optional in-lense display. The glasses connect to your phone, and provide real-time language translation.
→ Gemini Live: Ask questions with your camera in real-time about the world (e.g. "what is this cafe?"). This is being rolled out to everyone on Android and iOS.
→ Agent Mode: Task based AI-agent that can do stuff for you in the background (e.g. "keep a look out for accommodation options for WTM London in November")
→ AI Mode In Search ("Deep Search"): Ask longer and more complex queries, with AI reasoning and charts (e.g. "When is the best time to visit Vietnam based on the season, flight costs, and avoiding peak holiday travel". Google claim that deep search queries are 2x - 3x the size of traditional searches, and can personalise the results based on past searches (optional). See my next comment with some more thoughts on this.
→ Google Meet: Realtime speech translation in Google Meet.
→ Google Beam: 3D video conferencing with multiple cameras in the display.
→ Google Coding Assistant: Draw sketches and have AI develop complex, working prototypes of your idea. This is great for quickly creating an MVP, or even vibe coding small features for your website. Wait until travel marketers get their hands on this!
→ Imagen 4: High quality AI-images and designs, including posters and creatives.
→ Veo 3: Create AI-generated videos, including the dialogue and sound effects.
→ Flow Video: A video editor to create, cut and edit AI generated videos. You can export the clips into your favorite desktop video editor.
Here's a few links and reads:
io.google/2025/
theverge.com/google/670250/google-io-news-announcements-gemini-ai-android-xr
techcrunch.com/2025/05/21/googles-ai-agents-will-bring-you-the-web-now/
Personally, I'm most "excited" about the Android XR glasses. I think glasses could become the new form factor for mobile device, so there could be some amazing innovations in this space when developers can get access to these.
I got invited by Google to attend this year and it was awesome!! I got to try all of these products first hand and the glasses were the #1 thing I would immediately purchase!
That's awesome, I'm so jealous you attended! What else was new and/or interesting? I feel that the Google conference is now more interesting than Apple's! Although they all have the same kind of formula.
Probably the most impactful of the updates announced at this week's Google I/O for the entire online travel ecosystem is "deep search" which will allow consumers to perform more complicated searches with personalisation.
As I see it, the impact of deep search is two-fold:
1. The reasoning model could take traffic away from expert articles and blogs. If Google's AI results can give you a credible answer to a complex travel question (beyond "snippets") then there's no need to go and do the research directly yourself. The hardcore DIY-researchers who love to research travel are still going to go direct to blogs and articles, but the general consumer (who probably clicks those affiliate links) might be satisfied with the deep search result, thus denying those websites of traffic and revenue.
2. Because of (1), ad-networks and OTAs that rely on the sea of web traffic will have degraded performance. Why? Google has never really dug into your previous searches to give you answers to your current one. On the other hand, online travel companies (e.g. KAYAK, etc) DO use your search history from ad-networks such as Criteo and Blukai which use various techniques (including cookies) to track your behaviour across the web. If those ad-networks aren't getting as much information about you from web traffic, then the OTAs will know less about you and won't be able to optimise that bit of the search funnel as they enjoyed in past years. Maybe this is just fractions of a % of conversion rate — but this matters when hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into online marketing (including to Google) by online travel agencies to acquire traffic.
Bottom line — deep search is going to make it harder for both web content providers and web stores to generate traffic and sales. Google are of course going to have to monetise their search. But instead of past years where they stuck ads on top of the search results and advertisers bid to be on top — I think it's more likely that Google bring the suppliers to integrate into their "search" and charge fees or commission. This is already happening with things like Google shopping, and to some extent flights and hotels.
I don't think these changes will happen overnight, but the direction that Google want to take search is clear. It may take some years for the technology and consumer behaviour to change. But for both creators and suppliers, we need to pay attention to these changes and develop strategies and tactics to survive them and adapt.
Ultimately, will these changes make travel better for the consumer? I'm on the fence.
Thanks for the summary @Ian Definitely some developments that will disrupt
Appreciate your insights Ian, thanks for sharing.
Interesting insight, thank you for sharing!