How to Use Gemini to Plan a Trip: Steps and Prompts

To plan a trip with Gemini, sign in at gemini.google.com or in the Gemini app, check that Keep Activity is on, and give it your dates, group, budget, pace and interests in one prompt. Gemini uses Google Flights and Google Hotels to search flights and stays, and Google Maps to look up places, hours and walking times. In the phone app, it can save the places it pins to a Google Maps list. It can't book anything for you, and its hours and prices need a check before you commit.

Below: what Gemini can use for a trip as of November 2026, a step-by-step workflow, six prompts to copy, and what to check before you go.

What Gemini can use when you plan a trip

Gemini draws on Google's own travel data automatically, and on your personal apps only if you connect them. Google calls these integrations Connected Apps; in the Bard days they were called Extensions. Here is what matters for a trip, per Google's help pages, checked on November 2, 2026:

Gemini also has travel-adjacent connected apps that act for you: OpenTable for restaurant reservations (US and UK), and GetYourGuide and Viator for tours and activities (US only). All three are English only, for personal accounts, 18 and over.

How to plan a trip with Gemini, step by step

1. Set up once. Sign in at gemini.google.com or in the app, and turn on Keep Activity; Flights, Hotels and Maps don't work without it. To let Gemini read your booking emails, open Customize > Connectors in the sidebar and add Google Workspace.
2. Start with a trip brief. One prompt with every detail beats ten short ones. Use prompt 1 below, and say what you don't want as well as what you do.
3. Check flights and hotels. Ask for options with prices and times (prompt 2), then book on the airline's or hotel's own site. Prices move, so treat Gemini's numbers as a starting point.
4. Build the days by area. Ask Gemini to group stops by neighborhood and to give walking times between them (prompt 3). Our guide to planning an itinerary by neighborhood explains why this matters more than the order of sights.
5. Check every stop on Google Maps. Ask for hours on the day you plan to go, closing days and anything listed as closed (prompt 4).
6. Put the plan on a map. In the Gemini phone app, tap the map in the answer, then tap Export to Google Maps to save every pinned place to a custom list. Google's help page describes this for phones and tablets; the desktop version doesn't mention it, so on a computer you may have to save places yourself. Our guide to mapping a trip in Google Maps shows how to split a list into days.
7. Pull in what you've booked. Once you have confirmations in Gmail, ask Gemini to list them and add them to Calendar (prompt 5).
8. Turn it into something you can carry. Paste the final plan into a Canvas doc, then use Share & export > Export to Docs, and make the doc available offline. Our offline itinerary guide covers what else to save.

If Personal Intelligence has reached your account, Gemini can also draw on your saved places in Maps, your Gmail and your Google Photos to tailor suggestions; Google's help page lists "create a tailored itinerary" as an example. It's off until you opt in, it's rolling out gradually, and it isn't available in the European Economic Area, Switzerland or the UK.

Six Gemini travel planner prompts to copy

Each prompt asks for something you can check. Replace the brackets with your details.

1. The trip brief. Use this to open the chat.

Plan a [5]-day trip to [Lisbon] from [May 12 to 16].
Who: [two adults in their 30s].
Budget: [mid-range, about €150 a night for the hotel].
Pace: [relaxed, no more than 3 planned stops a day].
Interests: [food, viewpoints, one day trip].
Avoid: [nightlife, long queues, very early starts].
Give one area of the city per day. For every stop, say why it
fits us and whether it needs booking ahead. Mark anything you
are unsure about.

2. Flights and hotels.

Find round-trip flights from [Chicago] to [Lisbon], leaving
[May 11] and returning [May 17], for 2 adults, economy, at most
1 stop. Show the 3 best options by total travel time and price.
Then find 4 hotels in [Baixa or Chiado] for those nights under
[€150] a night with a rating of 4 or higher, and say how far
each is from the nearest metro station.

3. Days by neighborhood.

Using the stops we agreed on, build the plan day by day. Keep
each day within one or two neighboring areas. For each day, give
the order of stops, the walking time between them from Google
Maps, a lunch area, and one rainy-day swap.

4. The Google Maps check.

Look up every stop in this plan on Google Maps. For each one,
give the opening hours on the day I've planned it, the closing
day of the week, the rating, and whether it is listed as
temporarily or permanently closed. Put anything that clashes
with my plan at the top.

5. Bookings from Gmail. This needs Google Workspace connected.

Find the confirmation emails in my Gmail for my [Lisbon] trip:
flights, hotel, and any tours or tickets. List each one with the
date, time, confirmation number and address, and the email it
came from. Then add the flights and tours to my Google Calendar.

6. Deep Research for the rules. Use it for the questions a chat answer handles badly: permits, entry rules, seasonal closures. Choose Add files > Deep Research first.

Research what a first-time visitor to [Cinque Terre] in [late
September] needs to know: trail closures and permits, train
passes and prices, which villages get most crowded and when,
and how to get there from [Florence]. Use official park,
railway and tourism sources where possible and cite them.

For more prompts that work in any chatbot, see our ChatGPT travel planning prompts; they transfer to Gemini with no changes.

Save your travel preferences as a skill, not a Gem

Many guides suggest building a "travel planner Gem" with your preferences so you don't retype them. That advice is about to expire. Google's help page on the Gems transition says that for personal accounts, Gems become read-only on November 17, 2026 and are removed on December 17, 2026. Existing Gems are converted to skills automatically.

Skills, available for now to people 18 and over on personal accounts, do the same job: reusable instructions you can call in any chat by typing / and the skill's name, and Gemini can apply one on its own when it fits your prompt. To make one, open Customize > Skills > Create > Create manually, and paste instructions like "We travel as two adults, mid-range budget, relaxed pace, no more than three planned stops a day, always group stops by area and flag anything that needs booking." For now, Google says skills don't work with Canvas or Deep Research, so use them in ordinary chats.

Gemini inside Google Maps: Ask Maps

Gemini also lives inside the Google Maps app, as a separate feature called Ask Maps. Google launched it on March 12, 2026 in the US and India on Android and iPhone, saying a desktop version would follow. You tap the Ask Maps button, ask a question about places, and get an answer with a map. From there you can save places to a list, share them or book a restaurant.

On August 6, 2026, Google expanded it to Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Japan and Mexico, plus more than 150 countries and territories in English. You can also connect Gmail, which is off by default, so Ask Maps factors in your flight or hotel reservation, and it remembers past conversations if your history settings are on. Hotel and event discovery and food ordering started in the US only.

The two fit different moments. Use the Gemini app to plan the trip, and Ask Maps on the ground, for questions like what's open near your hotel before a late flight. For the version in Google Search, with a trip-planning Canvas and hotel booking, see our test of Google AI Mode on travel videos.

Free or paid: what you need for trip planning

Most trips need nothing beyond the free plan. Here is how Google's plans differ on the points that matter for travel, from the US subscriptions page and the help page on limits, checked on November 2, 2026:

The context window is the one limit you might notice. It's how much of the chat Gemini can keep in view at once, and 32,000 tokens fills up quickly with a pasted video transcript or a long back-and-forth. When a free chat starts forgetting your budget or dates, start a new one and paste your trip brief again. Limits refresh every five hours up to a weekly cap, and Google says they can change without notice.

What Gemini gets wrong, and what to check

Gemini's answers come from real Google data, which makes them more current than a chatbot working from memory. They aren't checked, though, and four gaps come up again and again:

• Hours and closures are only as fresh as the listing. In our Gemini YouTube guide, a Rome courtyard recommended in a May 2026 video was listed as temporarily closed on Google Maps by October, and nothing in a summary of the video would tell you.
• Prices are a snapshot. Flight and hotel results are search results, not quotes. Confirm on the booking page.
• Email answers can be out of date. Google's own Workspace help page warns that Gemini can "provide outdated information, like from an older email when there's a more recent one." Open the sources it lists, especially after a schedule change.
• Its suggestions mix with yours. In a long chat, Gemini's ideas and your must-dos blur. Ask it to mark which stops came from you.

Our checklist for fact-checking an AI travel itinerary covers the full routine, and our guide to the best AI trip planner for each job compares Gemini with ChatGPT, Claude and the dedicated travel apps.

Where Vidtrip fits

If your trip starts from a YouTube travel guide rather than a blank page, Vidtrip, the tool we make, does the video part of this workflow. Paste the video's link, answer four questions about your trip and pay $4.99 once; in about a minute you get a day-by-day plan that keeps the creator's picks and what they say to skip, each linked to its timestamp, with every stop looked up on Google Maps and pinned on a map. If the video can't be planned from, such as one without captions, the payment is refunded automatically. It doesn't search flights or hotels, so Gemini still handles that part.

Open our Lisbon example plan to see a full plan first, or start a plan from a video link.