Google aims to repeat commercial success of Expedia and Travelocity in the tourist industry by offering travelers a one-stop shop for travel information. It is speculated that the next stage in Google’s development is to expand its travel offering into a travel portal where holiday planners will learn lots about their travel destination and see related user-generated content. Google Travel currently include videos of selected destinations and properties and ads from tourism boards.

BusinessWeek writes about Google’s potential plans to enter the travel arena with a specialized offering. That offering, assuming it appears, would likely include a heavy dose of video. There would also likely be a heavy helping of Maps. Interestingly, Google is pushing Maps and MyMaps today as a travel/trip planning tool.

Google could create a pretty interesting travel product using some combination of YouTube/video and Maps, including StreetView, with social elements (e.g., search UGC/MyMaps). Google used to show a one box that would expedite a search on the top branded travel destinations for queries such as “flights to NYC,” but I was unable to reproduce that today.

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