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Google AI Mode
Books Your Travel

Track flight prices, price a trip in your points, and book the hotel without leaving Google. Plus the prompt that tells you whether to pay cash or burn the miles.

Google Search can now watch flight prices for you, tell you what a flight or hotel costs in your points, and take you all the way through booking a room. It is free, it is sitting inside regular Google Search under AI Mode, and almost nobody is using it yet.

This is the shift I keep pointing at. AI going from "help me research this" to "help me actually get this done." Google rolled these out on August 27. Below is exactly what to say to get each one, and the one calculation that decides whether points are worth using at all.

Set A Price Watch On Your Flight

Describe the trip in plain English and AI Mode pulls live pricing from more than 300 airlines and travel sites. Then you say "track these flight prices for me," confirm it, and Google emails you when the price moves for those exact dates and that exact route.

  1. Open Google AI Mode in Search, on your phone or desktop.
  2. Describe the trip the way you would say it out loud, including your real constraints. Nonstop only, nothing before 8am, under $400.
  3. Say "track these flight prices for me" and confirm when it asks.
  4. Watch your inbox. The alerts arrive by email, not as a push notification.

The move most people miss: ask for flexible dates first, then track the cheapest combination. Locking your alert to one fixed pair of dates is how you end up watching a price that was never going to be the good one. Price tracking works in more than 180 countries.

See The Price In Your Points

This is the one that used to mean logging into a rewards portal and clicking through an award calendar. Now you just ask. "How many American Airlines miles would it take me to fly from Atlanta to Miami?" and it returns the current award pricing.

Live at launch: Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian, American Airlines, Choice Hotels, Hilton, and Wyndham. Accor, Flying Blue, Hyatt, LATAM, and Lufthansa's Miles & More are coming. It works for hotels too, and it is available globally.

Ask for the cash price in the same breath. Those two numbers together are what feeds the prompt further down.

Book The Hotel Without Leaving

Tell it your dates, your budget, your neighborhood, and the amenities you actually care about, and it builds a visual list with guest reviews so you can compare. When you pick one, you hit "Continue on Google" and finish the reservation with Google Pay.

Booking partners include Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Wyndham, Choice, Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com, Priceline, and Trip.com. Hotel booking started rolling out in the US in English and is reaching more people over the coming weeks, so if you do not see it yet, that is why.

Read this before you tap book

Google is not the merchant. The hotel or the booking platform is, which means the cancellation policy, the refund, and any resort fee are theirs, not Google's. Ask for the full cancellation terms and the total with taxes and fees before you confirm, and screenshot the confirmation.

The Exact Requests To Paste

Vague questions get you a vague list. These are written the way AI Mode responds to best. Fill in the brackets and paste one at a time.

Google AI Mode travel requests
FLIGHT SEARCH + PRICE TRACKING I want to fly from [HOME AIRPORT] to [DESTINATION] leaving [DATE] and returning [DATE], for [N] people. Nonstop preferred, no red-eyes, nothing that lands after 11pm. Show me the best options with current prices. Then track these flight prices for me. FLEXIBLE DATES (this is where the real savings are) I want to fly from [HOME AIRPORT] to [DESTINATION] for [N] nights sometime in [MONTH]. Show me the five cheapest date combinations. Then track the cheapest one for me. POINTS VS CASH ON A FLIGHT How many [AIRLINE] miles would it take to fly from [HOME AIRPORT] to [DESTINATION] on [DATE]? Show me the cash price for that same flight, and the taxes and fees I would still pay on the award ticket. POINTS VS CASH ON A HOTEL How many [HOTEL PROGRAM] points is a [DATES] stay in [CITY], and what is the cash rate for the same room on the same nights? THE HOTEL BRIEF Find me a hotel in [CITY] for [DATES], [N] adults. Must have: [free parking / a real gym / walkable to X / breakfast included / a bathtub]. Under $[MAX] a night. I would rather be in [NEIGHBORHOOD]. Show me guest review scores, and tell me what people actually complain about in the reviews. THE ONE MOST PEOPLE SKIP Compare my top two options side by side on total cost including resort fees, parking, and taxes. Then tell me which one you would book and why.
Cash Or Points, Actually Decided

Now that Google hands you the points price and the cash price side by side, you can do the thing frequent flyers do and most people never learn. You work out what each point is worth in this specific booking, then compare it to what that point is normally worth.

A $420 flight that costs 25,000 miles plus $11.20 in fees is 1.64 cents a point. American miles are worth roughly 1.4 cents, so that is a good redemption. The same math on a Hilton night is usually the opposite answer. Paste your numbers into this and it runs it for you.

Points Or Cash Skill (SKILL.md)
--- name: points-or-cash description: Decide whether to pay cash or use points for a flight or hotel. Use whenever I paste travel options that show both a cash price and a points price. --- # Points Or Cash ## What you do I will paste flight or hotel options that show a cash price and a points price. You tell me which one to book. You are decisive. You give me a number, a call, and one line of reasoning. ## The math you run every single time Step 1. Cents per point. CPP = (cash price - taxes and fees I would still pay on the award) / points required x 100. Example: a $420 flight that costs 25,000 miles plus $11.20 in fees. (420 - 11.20) / 25000 x 100 = 1.64 cents per point. Step 2. Compare it to the baseline for that program. These are rough published baselines. They move, so say out loud that you are using an approximation and tell me if the program has changed recently. - Alaska Mileage Plan: about 1.4 cents - American AAdvantage: about 1.4 cents - Hyatt: about 1.7 cents (the strongest hotel currency) - Wyndham Rewards: about 0.9 cents - Marriott Bonvoy: about 0.7 cents - Choice Privileges: about 0.6 cents - Hilton Honors: about 0.5 cents - IHG One Rewards: about 0.5 cents Above the baseline, points are a good deal. Below it, pay cash. Step 3. Adjust for the four things people forget. - Forgone earning. A cash booking earns points and counts toward status. An award booking usually does not. Subtract roughly 5 to 8 percent of the cash fare from the value of paying cash. - Cancellation. Award tickets are often refundable for free. A cheap cash fare frequently is not. If my dates are shaky, that flexibility is worth real money, so tilt toward points. - Expiring or oversized balance. If I say my points expire soon or I am sitting on a huge pile I will never spend, lower the bar. Points I never use are worth zero cents. - Cash I actually have. If this trip is a stretch on cash, say so. A mediocre redemption that lets me take the trip beats a perfect redemption I never book. ## How you answer The call: BOOK WITH POINTS, PAY CASH, or WAIT. The number: the cents per point you calculated, next to the baseline you compared it to. Why: one sentence. No hedging. The catch: anything that would flip your answer (a resort fee, a positioning flight, a change fee, a fare class that earns nothing). If WAIT: tell me the price I should be waiting for, so I know what a good alert looks like when it lands. ## Rules - Never tell me a redemption is good just because it is available. - If the CPP is within 10 percent of the baseline either way, say it is a coin flip and break the tie on flexibility, not on the math. - If I did not give you the taxes and fees on the award, ask for them once. They change the answer more often than people expect. - Do not invent award availability, fees, or fare rules. If you do not know, tell me what to go check.

Works as a pasted prompt in ChatGPT or Claude, or save it as a Claude Skill so it triggers itself every time you paste travel options.

The Whole Trip, Not Just The Flight

Google is strongest at the transaction. Finding the fare, watching the price, checking the award chart, closing the room. It is not the thing that builds you a day-by-day itinerary with real restaurants and travel times that make sense.

For that half, use my Travel Planner skill, which plans the whole vacation in about five minutes. And if you want AI handling the booking end to end rather than you clicking through it, here is the flight-booking skill that saves your travel rules once so you never re-explain them.

Stack them and the whole thing takes an evening instead of a weekend.