Two years ago, I had to plan a vacation trip to London and all I remember was spending countless hours online checking airline ticket prices, hotel prices, and switching back and forth between different dates to see which combination resulted in the most affordable trip for me. That's not to mention the days of extensive research into London's theatre scene, events, restaurants, tourist attractions, and more, to find the places I knew I'd enjoy most. If I was to plan that same trip now, I'd have a much better way of doing it through Google's new Destinations.

Google is integrating its almighty knowledge of places with its Google Flight, Hotel search, weather history, itineraries, and more to become the travel agent you always wanted to have and that you can always pester for questions and new details. Simply typing in a continent, country, or state and adding the word "destination" opens up a list of possible travel cities to explore with airplane and hotel prices right beneath them. You can filter that list by type of activity like hiking, museums, nature, culture, skiing, and more. (You can also replace "destination" with "travel" but it seems that won't get you the cards with prices, it'll just show different destinations and points of interest.)

Each destination has nice photos, a short description, different suggested itineraries for several days, a list of top sights, a handy map that links to Google Maps, videos, and a few nearby or similar places.

If you don't know when's the ideal time to travel, there are exact and flexible date filters to help you find the cheapest fares and average weather conditions by month to figure out the most appropriate timing for your activities. And once you're set on a specific destination, you can start planning a trip to see all possible flights and hotels filtered by number of stops or stars, respectively.

It's all so incredibly easy to use and it should simplify travel planning for anyone. Now if only it packed our suitcases, fed our dogs, notified our bosses, and sprung the money for the whole thing, it'd be perfect.

Source: Google