Travolution Connects 2026: Google finds search is changing but here to stay

Opening keynote also detailed Google's AI advances

Google’s industry head of travel UK, Ailish English, told attendees last week’s at the inaugural Travolution Connects event that “the ultimate search engine”, as defined and envisioned by Larry Page decades ago, is now a reality. 

Her opening keynote focused on the evolving face of search in the age of AI, drilling down into how user expectations of what search is capable of today have changed. 

And she explained to guests that “Google search is still fundamentally important for attracting any of your customers.” 

She references internal data which shows that 78% of people will actually start their journey on Google, before flipping to an LLM to go really deep do comparisons, before 62% of them return to Google to finalise their purchase decision. 

“There's trust - they're really comfortable with Google, so once they've done all that AI exploring, they're coming back to make that decision on Google.” 

Her opening slide showed a quotation from 2000 in which Google’s co-founder and CEO Larry Page predicts that “the ultimate search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want.” 

English acknowledged that Google has made “more changes in the last 18 months to our search than we have in the last 20 years”. 

Underpinning these changes is Gemini, Google’s AI-native ecosystem which is taking search beyond keywords to conversations. 

“Have you noticed,” she asked attendees, “your queries are probably getting a lot longer as a result of conversational search? You're not really saying ‘hotel in London’ anymore, you’re saying, ‘I want a hotel in London, but my mum is coming with me, but I want my own room, not adjoining, with a shower, not a bath.” 

English had the data to back this up, with a slide showing a 10% increase year-on-year in the number of travel searches with more than eight terms, in the five biggest European markets. 

She outlined in relatively stark terms what this shift away from keywords means for the future of travel advertisers and marketers. “We have had that traditional marketing model, trying to build audiences and then track them along the consumer journey. We've spent a lot of time kind of in that space. But, let me tell you, that is over.   

“Travelers are showing fluidity of movement all the time, so that no more are they on a linear funnel.” 

Google, clearly, has a product to address this – Google AI Max for Search was launched in May 2025. 

English claimed it can “understand the intent behind those long customer queries, and then show relevant ads by matching and customizing the text against the actual query that comes in, so the consumer is far more likely to actually click on the ad… AI can go deep, bringing the consumer right to the exact landing page where conversion is most likely to happen.”  

Proofpoints were shared courtesy of a Hilton case study. “When they turned on the three features - keywordless targeting, customisation in the text ad, bringing it to the final URL - they saw 58% more bookings, but they weren't just getting more bookings coming through -there was a 55% increase in booking value as well”. 

Looking ahead, she alerted guests to Google’s commitment to developing an agentic experience for lodgings, ‘an authentic end-to-end experience in search where people will be able to check out at the click of a button”.

This will build on successful pilots in the ticketing, wellness and retail sectors using its UCP protocol. 

“I think ‘watch this space’ because if I am lucky enough to come back, maybe next year, I think we'll be a lot further on in this journey,” she said.