Google's AI Mode now tracks flight prices and books hotels

Google announced on Thursday (27) that AI Mode, its conversational search experience, will now help users plan and book trips directly within the conversation. According to TechCrunch, the feature now tracks flight prices, allows hotel bookings, and shows the cost of flights and nightly rates in points or miles.

The move marks a shift in positioning: AI Mode no longer just finds information, it now executes part of the booking process, bringing the tool closer to an automated travel agent.

How flight tracking works

The user tells AI Mode when and where they want to travel, and the tool displays the best options with the latest prices from more than 300 airlines and travel sites. Those who want to book right away can put together the itinerary on the spot. Those who prefer to wait for a price drop can ask something like "track these flight prices for me" and start receiving emails whenever the price changes for the destination and dates provided.

According to TechCrunch, flight price tracking is already available in more than 180 countries. Google did not disclose the full list of these countries. In practice, it's the logic of the already familiar Google Flights moving into the conversational interface, with the price alert built into the question-and-answer flow.

Hotel booking with "Continue on Google"

For hotels, the user tells AI Mode about the trip and their preferences and receives a list of options with reviews and relevant factors. Upon choosing, the option "Continue on Google" is triggered, which appears next to integrated partners. From there, users can select the room, review details such as the cancellation policy, and complete payment with Google Pay.

Google makes clear an important point for those building this kind of integration: the hotel or the booking platform is the one that processes the reservation and handles customer service. In other words, Google acts as a discovery and checkout layer, but operations remain with the partner.

Hotel booking began rolling out in the United States, in English, and will expand in the coming weeks with offers from Booking.com, Choice Hotels International, Expedia, Hilton, Hotels.com, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International, Priceline, Trip.com, and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. No date has been announced for Brazil or other languages.

Cost in points and miles

The third feature, this one available globally, lets users see the cost of flights and hotels in points or miles. The example given by Google is a question like: "I want to travel from Atlanta to Miami using my AA miles. Help me find nonstop flights departing October 9 and returning October 12". The tool shows how many miles are needed to book the corresponding flights.

What changes for those working in travel and e-commerce in Brazil

The miles feature is available globally and flight tracking already covers more than 180 countries, although Google hasn't detailed which ones. Regardless of the list, the direction is clear: part of the discovery and price-comparison journey is moving inside AI Mode, an environment where the result is generated by a language model, not by a traditional ten-blue-links SERP.

For product and engineering teams at OTAs, airlines, hotel chains, and travel marketplaces, this reinforces a trend that had already been discussed around AI-assisted search: being well indexed is no longer enough; it's necessary to be structured to be read and cited by an agent. The hotel partners listed by Google enter the checkout flow precisely because they have integration via Google's booking tools, which requires prior technical work on feeds, availability, and real-time pricing.

Some practical points that follow from the announcement:

• Structured data and inventory feeds gain weight, since AI needs price, availability, and policies (such as cancellation) in a consumable format to build the response and checkout.
• Checkout within Google changes who controls the last mile of conversion. Since Google clarifies that booking and support remain with the partner, the operational challenge of customer service doesn't disappear, but the capture of intent happens earlier, at the search stage.
• Loyalty programs enter the comparison game: with the cost in miles exposed in the conversation, competitiveness in points now directly influences the recommendation.

What's still open

Google has not said when hotel booking will arrive in Brazil or whether there will be Portuguese-language support. It also did not detail the ranking criteria for the options shown in AI Mode, nor how an establishment outside the current list of partners can integrate into the "Continue on Google" flow. Nor did it publish the list of the more than 180 countries covered by flight tracking. For those developing travel products in the country, the immediate takeaway is to monitor the expansion and prepare data infrastructure, because the trend of AI-assisted search is already underway.