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.
Note: Zapier Agents has moved from beta to general availability. This video shows beta labels because it was recorded during an earlier phase of Agents.
Read the video transcript
I'm going to show you how to create a travel booking organizer agent in Zapier Agents, and we're going to use this travel booking organizer template. You can read a little bit about how the agent works as a high-level summary, as well as check out some of the tools that we're going to connect under Capabilities. But I'm going to go over everything, so let's click Use Template to get started.
This page is another overview of how the agent works. Specifically, you can review the trigger that's going to start the workflow, as well as the exact natural language instructions that the agent's going to use to work. You can also see some of the connected tools, and we'll go over that when we get to the agent itself. The last thing that I'll share with you here on this page is that it is an official Zapier template—you can tell by the checkmark here next to "Zapier" in the top right-hand corner.
There's nothing else we can do here yet, so I'm going to click Use This Template. The last step before we get into the agent itself is to connect the various tools we're going to use. It's going to use a Gmail account, a Slack account, and a Google Calendar account. I'm going to add the same Google Calendar account as my Gmail account. You can make them different if you want. I'm just going to use the Slack account that it's suggesting here.
If you wanted to change these accounts, you can click this widget for each option to connect a new account or manage accounts. You can also click the dropdown to select any connected accounts that you use in other Zapier automations. You can connect additional apps after creating the agent, so this isn't your only opportunity to connect or change accounts. I have everything the way I want it, so we can proceed by clicking Create.
Now we're in the agent itself. The trigger for this agent is Schedule by Zapier: Every day, but you can change the time of day, decide if you want it to trigger on weekends, or change it to every week or month, depending on your travel needs. You could also trigger it based on actions in a certain travel app, or set it to trigger on demand. We're going to keep this trigger as is, so I can show you how it works without customizations.
Next, we can see the natural-language instructions the agent will use. There's also a button here to insert additional tools, including any from the thousands of apps Zapier connects to. The instructions start by saying you are a travel booking assistant whose goal is to scan a Gmail account for travel-related emails, identify booking confirmations, create calendar events, and notify the user.
Step one is email processing. It searches the connected Gmail account for non-spam emails from the last specific number of days containing keywords like "hotel," "tour," "flight," "train," "bus," "rental car," "Airbnb," and "travel." It uses the Gmail: Find Email tool. You can customize the email account or timeframe here, but otherwise, you can use the defaults. Then it analyzes the retrieved emails to detect booking confirmations and extract relevant details.
Step two is calendar management. For each confirmed booking, it creates a detailed event in your calendar using the Google Calendar: Create Detailed Event tool. You could customize things like adding attendees or descriptions, but I'm going to keep it as is. Then it compiles a list of addresses associated with the created events.
Step three is sending notifications. It sends a direct message to the selected Slack user with the titles of the created events and the compiled address list using the Slack: Send Direct Message tool. You could customize the message, especially if you're booking for a team, but we'll leave it as the default.
Now it's time to test the agent. This is one of the few times you'll interact with the chat aspect of Zapier Agents. The other time is if you run the workflow on demand. Otherwise, it runs in the background. The test confirms the trigger and scans the connected Gmail account for travel-related emails. I sent myself an email to test this out, asking to plan a trip from Denver, Colorado to Albuquerque, New Mexico from August 1–8, book a hotel for those days, and do a walking tour at 5 p.m. on August 3.
It found that email and noted other promotional travel emails that weren't actual bookings. It creates a calendar event for the trip dates, then a separate event for the walking tour. I approved these actions, though normally the workflow won't require manual approval once it's running.
The last step is the Slack notification. It sends a preview of the message with the event details. I approved it, and it completed the action. I can see the Google Calendar events created and the Slack message sent.
Finally, to turn the agent on, I click the Enable Agent toggle. Since it's set to run in the background, you can check its activity log to see completed runs. If it's on demand, you can start a new run using the New Chat button. Now you're ready to have the Zapier agent help organize your travel information and make trip planning easier.
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.
Note: This agent is set to scan emails from a timeframe that you define, and it runs daily. You can easily customize the timeframe, schedule, and keywords to match your travel booking patterns and planning timeline.
To get started, click on the button below, then follow the steps to customize your agent.
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Step 1: Activate your template
Navigate to the Travel Booking Organizer Agent template.
Click Use Template to start building in Zapier Agents.
Review the template summary.
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.
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).
Connect your Google Calendar account to create events.
Connect your Slack account to receive notifications.
Click Create once all three accounts are connected.
Note: If you change your mind or add things after the fact, you can connect or change accounts later in the setup process.
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:
The agent will scan your Gmail for travel booking confirmations and demonstrate how it extracts details like dates, locations, and booking types.
For each confirmed booking it finds, the agent creates detailed calendar events with relevant information extracted from your emails.
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.
The agent will show you a summary distinguishing between actual bookings and general travel-related emails that weren't booking confirmations.
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.
