GoKawiilAccording to every product demo from the last four years, planning a trip is a killer use case for AI. Just tell it where you’re going, they all promise, and your chatbot / agent / other buzzword will exhaustively search travel options, read up on all the fun things to do, check all the local hotspots, and offer you a fully fledged itinerary. So far, I’ve found this to work only in the most generic ways: If you want to do the six most obvious things in any city on planet Earth, AI has you covered, but that’s about as far as it goes.
I had a very different experience using Spark, Google’s new always-on AI agent. Spark is a hugely ambitious thing: Google intends it to be the interface through which you can use external apps, and over time even operate your computer. (“OpenClaw with better internet access” is a not-wrong way to describe it.) Spark is currently rolling out to Google’s $99 / month AI Ultra plan, but Google allowed me to try it early. I tested some simple action-oriented stuff, like having Spark go through my Gmail inbox and suggest a bunch of things I should unsubscribe from and having it comb my Google Docs for old tasks I still haven’t finished. In both cases, it did a fine job, even creating me a nicely organized document with a bunch of links to quickly unsubscribe from various marketing emails.
Then I gave Spark a simple trip-planning job. “I’m going to be in Hershey PA with my wife, two kids, and dog the weekend of July 18th. Can you make a plan for the whole weekend, including places to stay, eat, things to do, and everything else?” I left out a few salient details, like the concert tickets I have for that Saturday night, but figured I’d start with the six most obvious things to do in Hershey and go from there.
A few minutes later, Spark pinged me back. “I have created a comprehensive, family-friendly, and dog-friendly weekend itinerary for your trip to Hershey, PA, from Friday, July 17 to Sunday, July 19, 2026.” It shared a link to a Google Doc it had made me, and a couple thousand words of shockingly detailed, useful itinerary.
The most detailed, personalized trip itinerary I’ve ever gotten from an AI bot. Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge
To begin with, it offered driving directions from my house, an address that of course Google knows but I had not offered. It included a few hotel options, including their pet fees, and some dog-friendly activities that Frida might like. I never told Google my dog’s name is Frida; my only guess is that Spark found it through emails from my vet.
Spark also casually noted that my son Lewis will get into Hershey Park for free, because he’s not a year old yet, but that because Arthur is three, he’ll need a ticket. I don’t know if Spark was guessing what time Lewis naps in the afternoon, or if it knew it somehow, but it was right to schedule nap time for 1:30PM.
The whole Spark itinerary was filled with details like this. It included my wife’s name, and took into consideration the fact that she doesn’t like to eat onions or scallions. It included the Thomas Rhett and Niall Horan concert on Saturday night, presumably based on the Ticketmaster confirmation in my email, and noted that parking is included in the tickets we bought. When I got to the part where it mentioned getting a babysitter that night, I remembered to note that my parents are coming along for just that purpose, so I added a note to the conversation.
“That is a wonderful update!” Spark replied, happily calling my parents by their names, and switching its recommendations from a hotel to an Airbnb. When I asked Spark to put all the information in a Google Doc and share it with Anna, it found my wife’s email, attached the document, drafted a note that sounded like we were business colleagues instead of a married couple, and sent it along.
I’m pretty sure Airbnb blocked this, not Google. Screenshot: David Pierce / The Verge
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