It seems that Google wants to help you plan your next holiday. Recent news from BusinessWeek indicates that Google is considering putting into action plans to enter the travel area.

This new plan by Google would likely include video (perhaps from YouTube) and most likely be helped along by Google Maps.

Rob Torres, Google’s Managing Director for Travel, has said that the goal of Google’s travel division “is to give users a destination where they can research travel plans, read user reviews, and see user uploaded videos and photos.” “We are already so highly searched for travel.” So I guess Google would like to make this new venture an all over one- stop shop for travel information.

Torres hasn’t been too forthcoming with the timeframe for this project or even what Google’s exact plans are. Be it a full- travel site, or just sponsored pages or a channel on YouTube - we will just have to “watch this space”! But with nearly a billion dollars in marketing for the project, you would suggest they won’t be doing this half-heartedly.

Online travel spending exceeds $80 billion annually in the US, so this is a very strategic move by Google to try and leverage the success of the YouTube phenomenon to build extra revenue from those of us who actually have time to take a holiday.