Automatically organize travel bookings with Zapier Agents

I, too, have spent weeks planning the perfect vacation—booking flights, making hotel reservations, and scheduling activities—only to discover that by the time of the trip, all those confirmation emails are scattered across my inbox. Cue me frantically searching through emails, trying to remember which hotel I booked or what time that walking tour starts.

With Zapier Agents, you can build an AI agent that automatically scans your Gmail for travel booking confirmations, extracts the key details, creates organized calendar events for you, and sends you a summary in Slack. Your agent handles the heavy lifting of translating scattered email bookings into easy-to-access calendar events—so you can focus on enjoying your trip instead of managing it (I know I will).

Use Zapier’s AI orchestration platform to turn your travel planning chaos into an organized itinerary that’s always at your fingertips. Watch the video below to see how it works, or keep reading for step-by-step instructions.

How to set up an automated travel booking organizer with Zapier Agents

In this example, we’ll start with a template in Zapier Agents. This template enables the agent to automatically scan your Gmail account daily for travel-related emails containing booking confirmations. When the agent finds relevant emails with keywords like “hotel,” “flight,” “Airbnb,” or “tour,” it analyzes them to extract booking details, creates detailed calendar events in Google Calendar, and sends you a notification in Slack with a summary of what was organized.

To get started, click on the button below, then follow the steps to customize your agent.

Step 1: Activate your template

1. Navigate to the Travel Booking Organizer Agent template.

2. Click Use Template to start building in Zapier Agents.

3. Review the template summary.

4. Click Use this template.

Step 2: Connect Gmail, Google Calendar, and Slack

After going through a summary of what the template does, you’ll need to connect the accounts your agent will use.

1. Connect your Gmail account to find travel booking emails. You can use a previously connected account from other Zapier automations or connect a new account (this applies to all the accounts you’re connecting).

2. Connect your Google Calendar account to create events.

3. Connect your Slack account to receive notifications.

4. Click Create once all three accounts are connected.

Step 3: Review your agent’s trigger

The trigger is set to Schedule by Zapier by default, and is configured to automatically scan your email daily for new travel bookings. If you’re planning a vacation, processing information every day ensures you never miss a booking confirmation and keep your calendar updated as you finalize plans.

But if you want your agent to work some other way, you can click Replace trigger and select from options like:

• On demand for manual activation when you know you have new bookings

• Every week or at other intervals (if you don’t book travel frequently)

• Trigger via Zap to trigger from other automated workflows

Step 4: Review and customize the agent’s instructions

The agent uses three main tools to create an automated travel organization system:

• Gmail: Find email, which searches for travel-related emails in your inbox

• Google Calendar: Create detailed event, which creates calendar events from booking details

• Slack: Send direct message, which notifies you with a summary of your organized bookings

You can customize your agent by tweaking the provided prompt (which is written in natural language). You can also adjust the actions of the tools themselves by clicking the widgets next to each tool.

With this agent, you can customize things like:

• Search timeframe: Adjust this to match your booking timeline. Use 14-30 days if you book far in advance, or three to five days if you’re more of a last-minute planner.

• Travel keywords: The agent searches for emails containing “hotel,” “tour,” “flight,” “train,” “bus,” “rental car,” “Airbnb,” and “travel.” Based on your travel style, you can swap those for specific terms like “resort,” “cruise,” or “restaurant.”

• Calendar details: Customize which Google Calendar receives events, add automatic attendees (like your spouse or travel companions), or modify event descriptions to include “Created by Zapier Agents” for easy identification.

• Notification preferences: Adjust the Slack message format, specify which Slack user receives notifications, or add additional team members for group travel coordination.

• Booking detection: Fine-tune how the agent distinguishes between actual booking confirmations and general travel-related emails to reduce false positives.

Step 5: Test and deploy your agent

Click Test agent to run a sample workflow using your recent travel-related emails from the timeframe you defined. From there:

1. The agent will scan your Gmail for travel booking confirmations and demonstrate how it extracts details like dates, locations, and booking types.

2. For each confirmed booking it finds, the agent creates detailed calendar events with relevant information extracted from your emails.

3. Review the proposed calendar events and Slack notification, then click Approve to see them executed. You’ll only need to use this approval step when testing your agent, not when it’s running live.

4. The agent will show you a summary distinguishing between actual bookings and general travel-related emails that weren’t booking confirmations.

5. If everything looks right, toggle on Enable agent when you’re done testing.

Once your agent is deployed, it’ll automatically run on the schedule you chose. You can monitor the agent’s activity by visiting the Activity tab to see successful runs and review what bookings were processed.

Delegate your travel organization duties to Zapier Agents

This template gives you a flexible foundation for travel organization that you can adapt to your specific vacation planning needs. Customize your agent to send booking summaries to family group chats, create separate calendars for different types of trips, or securely integrate with other apps you already love using.

You could even set up automatic expense tracking by connecting to budgeting tools, create packing list reminders based on destination weather, or adapt the keywords and detection for specific travel styles—like business trips or adventure travel—across your business-critical tools.

This is just one example of what Zapier Agents can do to streamline your vacation planning process. Want more inspiration for building powerful AI assistants? Check out our guide to using Zapier Agents.