Charity Mhende on how Plan Your Summer Travel with Google’s Top Tips & AI features

The summer travel season is predicted to be busy with Americans booking getaways. Google search trends show increased searches for cheap family vacations and TSA pre-check. AI is playing a role in helping plan summer vacations, with tools like FOD for itinerary ideas and SGE for deeper travel planning. Popular vacation spots include California, Glacier National Park, Lake Tahoe, Mount Rushmore, and Niagara Falls. AI can also help with mapping out itineraries and finding family-friendly places. AI is seen as a tool to enhance and improve the travel experience. Google Maps offers features like Immersive View to pre-plan destinations. Turks and Caicos is a highly searched destination. For more information, visit google.com/trends or blog.google. summer is just a couple of hours away and Americans including us right here in Northwest Jersey are very busy booking getaways and experts are already predicting that this summer travel season could really be one for the record books. In fact searches for cheap family vacations, that's my kind of search right there, spiked on Google this past month and TSA pre-check, that's important to know too. Searches there have hit an all-time high as lines at airports continue to lengthen. So whether you're hitting the road soon or maybe dreaming about a future trip, I have a special guest with me here at the RNJ morning program that's got a couple tools that we need to help plan a seamless summer vacation relying apparently and more and more on the benefits or the intrusion if you will of AI and how can AI help us have the best summer vacation possible. My guest is Charity Mendy back with us here she's a Google Trends expert to talk about this very important topic this morning. Charity it's Burt Barron WRNJ Radio New Jersey how are you? I'm good I thought I knew it was going to be just a matter of time you know AI is playing so many different roles and so many different aspects of our lives that it was just a matter of time before we used AI to help us plan that perfect family vacation. I think the matter of time is upon us now because what we're seeing online and people are searching AI is already trying to and beginning to play a role in people's summer vacation plans it appears. Yes and we're really excited about the potential that AI has to bring. You mentioned some search trends at the beginning so one of the most interesting ones I spotted was underage's summer travel ideas was a breakout search in the US in the past month and I've been really enjoying using FOD to test out some itinerary ideas as I'm planning for my summer travels. FOD is what you would think of as a creative partner as you think through some of the ideas that you have for your summer travels and very soon FOD is becoming very visual so you can include images so if you've done a big shopping haul you can figure out if that dress goes with those shoes or if that top that you wore can be appropriate for a wedding so that's really really exciting. What we're also seeing is people are asking questions on different ways to get to different places so for example people are also asking how to travel on a budget, how to travel to Europe on a budget and you can use things like FOD to help you figure out your itinerary for that destination and very very soon people also be able to play with what we call SGE or search generative experience which is an experiment in this in that lab and can help you get go a level deeper with your travel planning. Very interesting and I guess it was a matter of time a charity before you could ask Google, hey do these pants and these shoes go together and just show and show the camera and that's AI, hey do I match here with this, this is a good fashion idea. Trending vacation spots, how about travel abroad to the U.S. charity is that a popular thing that you're seeing? Yes, a lot of people, so every year we see U.S. road trips peak every summer in June and July, the most virtual road trip this year has been California but we're also seeing people ask for destinations like Glacier National Park, Lake Tahoe and National Park as among the most virtual travel destinations. We're also seeing people look for road trip ideas for places like Mount Rushmore, Niagara Falls and Lake Tahoe which I know Tahoe is beautiful any time of the year so that's also really exciting. Excellent stuff. So even like you can even plan an itinerary for me too, I understand charity. Let's say for example, hey I'm going to be in Paris on Friday, can you map out my day for me and it could find me a place for breakfast, it could do some sightseeing, find me a place for lunch, when's the best time to climb the Eiffel Tower, what's going on that night, it could kind of map out my whole schedule for me, can't it? Yes, BOD specifically can help you do all of that as you create those ideas and itineraries for your travels. If you use the Search Generative Experience FGE, you'll be able to, like you said, if you're in Paris, compare two different restaurants. Does one have a more family-friendly feel or if you wanted to figure out what the best time is to go to the Eiffel Tower, you can dig into stuff like that as well through the FGE product. That's currently available for people all over the US and you have to sign up via Search Labs. Who's got the better baguette? I think that would be my question for AI if I'm ever in Paris. Charity Mindy is my guest this morning. Google Trends Expert, we're talking about planning that summer vacation and AI is helping us plan out these trips for ourselves and for our families. At a charity, I was at a meeting yesterday along the beautiful Jersey Shore with some of the top broadcasters in our state and we've all come to the conclusion that AI is just going to make, if we're already good at what we're doing, AI is just going to make us better at it. From the Google perspective, is that how you view AI and just people that already kind of have an idea of what they're searching, it just makes it a little better and the experience a little easier for them? Yeah, well we've been using AI in our products for many, many years and so this is a really exciting time because there's so much potential and so many different things happening. I'm really excited, particularly as we talk about travel, to see how AI is moving in things like Google Maps. So, for example, we have a new feature called Immersive View, which allows you to pre-plan a destination. Like you said, you're in the Jersey Shore, you can use Google Maps to identify what times the area will be busy, figure out parking lots and just make your travel more seamless and helpful, which I think anyone can appreciate this time of the year. Oh, absolutely, especially around here. I could say, when is the traffic the heaviest on the Garden State Parkway? I could maybe ask Google about that before I plan my trip to the shore. What's your ideal getaway, Charity? You have a place around the world that you like to visit for recreation and vacation? Yeah, I'm a big fan of Turks and Caicos. I think it's so beautiful and interestingly enough, Turks and Caicos was one of the most searched for destinations in the past month. So, people were looking for couple summer destinations and Myrtle Beach was number one, Turks and Caicos was the second and Cape Cod was the third. So, yeah, Turks and Caicos is very high on my search list. Very nice. And for more information, as I like to mention when I speak to you and your co-workers from Google, I just say, well, go to Google and Google it and get some more information. Is that the easiest thing? Absolutely. So, you can go on google.com forward slash trends to see the different trending topics and themes that are happening in the U.S. as well as around the world. But also, if you want to learn more about what we're doing across AI and different themes, go to blog.google to learn for yourself. Excellent. Charity Mendy, Google Trends expert. Thank you for the time today and safe travels for you this summer if you plan on doing any vacationing around the globe. But thank you for the time this morning. Greatly appreciated. Thanks, Bert.