Google’s new AI tool is more than willing to help me live out my “Mamma Mia!” fantasies.
On Thursday, Google debuted Flight Deals, its AI assistant for travel booking. The tool, which is still in beta, allows users to input general prompts and receive affordable flight plans.
After toying with Flight Plans for a few hours, I didn’t find anything significantly cheaper than the pre-existing Google Flights. The $514 flight to Rabat, Morocco, was “62% less than usual,” Flight Plans told me. But I found about the same price by Googling “flight to Rabat.”
What’s more meaningfully new with Flight Plans, then, is its ability to answer open-ended questions.
For travelers looking for a specific activity, Flight Plans could prove beneficial. Ask the tool where to go on a ski trip or on a safari, and it’ll find the cheapest option within your parameters.
Or, for the cinephiles of the world, you could ask it to place you in your favorite movies.
I’ve always wanted to groove to some ABBA by the Mediterranean Sea, imagining myself alongside Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried. Maybe Flight Plans could place me within “Mamma Mia!”
The tool easily handled the prompt, providing me dates and times for reduced-price flights to Kalamata, Heraklion, or Athens.
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What about “Harry Potter” and its wizarding world? I told Flight Plans I was rewatching the movies; it provided $431 tickets to Edinburgh, where J.K. Rowling wrote the first book.
I hope to someday see those famous hills Julie Andrews says are “alive with the sound of music.” When I asked Google Flights to get me there, it found $464 tickets to Salzburg.
Recently, I strolled down to my local AMC to see the 20th anniversary rerelease of “Brokeback Mountain.” The pastoral scenes are so beautiful — and Flight Plans could get me to them via Jackson, WY, for $249.
Television also offers ample ground for travel. I loved “The White Lotus” — could Google send me on trips based on seasons one, two, and three? The tool found flights to Kahului, Catania, and Ko Samui.
None of these use cases are particularly new or unique to Google’s Flight Plans. You could easily do the same with ChatGPT — and people do, with the chatbot becoming a popular tool to assist with travel booking.
But, with Google Flights technology integrated, Flight Deals may have some extra perks.