Gemini in Chrome: What to Know About AI Trip Planning
October 10, 2025
Let’s state things plainly: Google in Chrome is trying to change how people experience the internet. Google is aiming to bake AI into web browsing. No apps. No jumping between tabs. Just instant answers, curated options, and decisions made without ever visiting your site.
So what does this mean for communities trying to connect with travelers?
The era of AI trip planning is now. Here’s what you need to know.
The Browser Is Now the Travel Agent
Gemini in Chrome surfaces insights, compares prices, books tables, and builds itineraries—all without leaving the tab. And it’s rewriting your role in the process.
Your future visitor may never land on your homepage. They might not follow the digital breadcrumbs you carefully laid out. Instead, they’re served an AI summary built from what others have said about your community.
Your story is being retold. Question is: by who?
Why This Matters
Let’s talk brass tacks. You’re not just marketing. You’re stewarding public funds to drive real economic impact. Every campaign, every ad dollar, is an investment your community is counting on to return value.
Now with Gemini in Chrome you might have technology quietly rerouting users who previously would have landed on your site. Your beautifully designed homepage might never get the chance to speak for itself.
As our CEO Dan Janes put it, “Chrome’s scale means Gemini is now ever-present in consumer workflows. That changes how travelers, shoppers, and learners interact with brands.”
You risk losing control of your narrative. If Gemini pulls context from third-party content instead of your own, misinformation, outdated content, or incomplete information could become the new “official version.”
Performance metrics also will no longer tell the full story. Traditional KPIs—sessions, bounce rates, time-on-site—won’t reflect reality in a zero-click world. But the pressure to show ROI will remain.
If your strategy doesn’t evolve with AI trip planning, your power will be diluted. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: Travelers using AI will move on without you, happily summarizing someone else’s story of your destination.
This isn’t intended to scare-monger. For over 40 years, Madden has aimed to help destinations. This is just the next frontier for us all.
3 Moves to Make Now
1. Write for Machines, Without Sounding Like One
Yes, SEO still matters. But it’s not about chasing rankings—it’s about being understood by the machines that now do the “searching.”
- Use schema markup—especially for FAQs, events, and reviews
- Write clearly, with purpose, and pack it with context.
- Build blocks, bulleted insights, and answers that stand on their own.
Because if Gemini in Chrome can’t parse your page, it’s going to find someone else that can.
Pro Tip: Your storytelling chops matter more than ever. Don’t write like a travel guidebook. Write like someone who gets the traveler’s brain in AI trip planning mode and talks like a real person.
2. Zero-Click Journeys Are Real, so Plan Accordingly
Zero-click web journeys are here. Your smartly crafted CTA might be sucked into an AI overview before the user ever scrolls.
- Your imagery, data, and language need to hit hard in the summary layer, not buried three clicks deep.
- Craft web content to be consumed by AI Overviews and easily summarized so your key messages pull through
In short: Your content still has a job, AI trip planning has just changed its role. It’s valuable even if your site doesn’t get a visit.
3. Leverage Your Other Owned Channels
Your website isn’t your only owned channel. Email. SMS. Loyalty apps. Partnerships. Local business networks. Organic social. These are your other tools in the toolbelt.
The open web might now be fuel for AI. But your direct channels? Those still belong to you. Build them. Nurture them. Treat them like gold.
- Leverage first-party data to inform other channels
- Prioritize engagement and relationship building over top of the funnel tactics
- Use AI to your advantage with personalization tools to cultivate leads and move users down the funnel
In an age of AI trip planning, control over your audience is your safety net. An AI middleman might take over discovery, but you still have ownership over relationships with travelers who have already discovered you.
New Game, New Metrics
Search metrics are going to be disrupted. So will bounce rates. And time-on-site. Welcome to the era of shadow browsing—where consumers make decisions without leaving a trace on your analytics.
What you can measure:
- Brand mentions in AI summaries
- Direct traffic spikes
- Email engagement
- Sentiment shifts
- Partner referrals
Still tracking traffic like it’s 2019? You’re probably missing half the story.
Disruption is an Opportunity
Gemini in Chrome is Google flexing its distribution muscle. Billions of people now interact with the web through an AI filter. If your community isn’t optimized for that shift, you’re not invisible—you’re irrelevant.
So here’s our take:
- Don’t build your strategy around visits. Build it around value.
- Make web content that’s optimized for AI overviews.
- Build relationships so strong, they bypass the algorithm entirely.
- Build an audience that seeks you out by name.
And remember: If you don’t tell your story, someone else will tell it for you.
Want help making sense of this shift toward AI trip planning, and building a strategy that keeps your community in the conversation? Let’s talk. Sharp strategy, smarter storytelling, and a team that gives a damn.
