How Google Gemini and NotebookLM Give Tourism Businesses Back Their Time

Most tourism operators using Google Workspace are paying for AI tools they have never opened. Gemini and NotebookLM are already in your account and they have some impressive capabilities that you will find impressive if you’ve never seen. In our recent Tourism Tech Session we covered what each tool does, how operators can connect them to their business data, and what you can test this week.

Quick links

• Watch the recording
• What are Tourism Tech Sessions?
• Google has three AI tools, not one
• What the @workspace command does in Gemini
• NotebookLM: AI that only uses your sources
• How the Studio turns your content into slides and videos
• Things to try today

Watch the recording

If you’re a Tourism Tribe member, login here to watch the recording of this session.

What are Tourism Tech Sessions?

Our Tourism Tech Sessions are twice monthly group coaching calls designed to support AI Enablement Plan members, whether you’re a direct member or a participant of one of our tourism digital capability programs. These sessions provide a space to:

• Learn the latest developments in tourism tech
• Ask questions in a safe, supportive environment
• Hear real-life examples and get practical demos
• Get the confidence to implement what you’ve learned

If you’re not a member, this article will walk you through the key takeaways. Join an AI Enablement Plan to access future Tourism Tech Sessions and have an expert at your fingertips to ask your business-specific questions.

Google has three AI tools, not one

Google currently has three separate AI tools and they do different things:

• Gemini: the one most people know. It is Google’s equivalent of ChatGPT, accessible at gemini.google.com from your Gmail account or any Google Workspace plan. It is available to both paid and free users.
• AI Overview: the summary that appears at the top of Google search results
• AI Mode: a more conversational search experience

AI Overview and AI Mode are search tools, not productivity tools. Gemini is the real gem. Gemini has two models to choose from.

• The fast model (Flash) handles quick tasks efficiently and uses fewer tokens, which matters if you are on a lower-tier Workspace plan with credit limits.
• The thinking model (Pro) takes longer but works through problems with more depth. For writing, reviewing content, or anything requiring careful reasoning, Pro is the better choice.

Token usage sits at the centre of AI costs on Google Workspace. Flash uses fewer tokens per request; Pro uses more. If your team is using Gemini heavily on a base plan, you will hit credit limits faster on Pro. Worth knowing before you roll it out to staff.

What the @workspace command does in Gemini

Gemini becomes genuinely powerful when you connect it to your Google Workspace data. Go to the Connected Apps setting in Gemini and enable Workspace integration. After that, type @workspace in Gemini before your request. Wait for it to appear in bold before hitting enter. Gemini will then be able to search across your emails, documents, and calendar to answer your question.

The practical use case: you are chasing a billing issue and cannot remember which supplier it involves or what was agreed. Ask Gemini @workspace to find the relevant emails, summarise the situation, and draft a professional follow-up. It pulls scattered information together and gives you a draft ready to send.

This only works if you are in the correct Google Workspace profile. Team members working from their personal Google accounts will not have access to shared documents. Getting everyone into the right profile is the first step and the step most businesses skip.

Gemini can also run on your phone. iPhone users can set it up through Shortcuts and run voice commands while driving – find a specific email or order detail without ever touching the screen.

NotebookLM: AI that only uses your sources

NotebookLM (at notebook.google.com) is different from every other AI tool in one important way: it only works from sources you provide. Upload documents, add website URLs, paste in Google Docs and the AI answers questions based solely on that content. It does NOT pull in outside information. It does not guess.

For a tourism operator, this is the difference between an AI that invents facts about your property and one that gives accurate answers based on your own operations manual, tour descriptions, or supplier contracts. The restriction is the feature.

A few things worth knowing about how it works:

• Notebooks are shareable, but only with people who have the same domain name as you. You cannot share across organisations.
• Google Docs added as sources do not automatically sync to update. If you update the original, delete and re-upload the source.
• Your chat history inside a notebook is private to you. The sources and any content you create are visible to everyone the notebook is shared with.
• Add your brand style guide as a source and NotebookLM will apply your brand guidelines to anything it generates.
• Add competitor websites as sources to run a comparison. NotebookLM identifies what they cover that you do not.
• Be aware that it does still hallucinate, but not nearly as often as other AI that grab information straight off the net.

For staff training, upload your operations manual to NotebookLM. Staff query the notebook instead of interrupting supervisors. Answers come directly from the manual, with citations pointing to the exact source.

How the NotebookLM Studio turns your content into slides and videos

Once you have sources in NotebookLM, the Studio has options for you to convert that content into finished formats. You are not getting a summary. You are getting a file you can use.

From a single set of sources, the Studio can generate:

• Presentation slide decks (downloadable as PDF or PowerPoint)
• Infographics
• Flashcards, useful for staff training on your products or policies
• Reports
• Videos with voiceover and images drawn from your sources

The videos are not broadcast quality, but they are fast to produce and work well for social media or internal team communication. The visual style (cartoon, realistic, illustrated) is set when you generate. The voiceover is American-accented by default and is editable. The images come from your uploaded sources, not from a stock library.

The Beautify function in Google Slides works alongside this. It uses Google’s AI to automatically enhance the design of existing slides, generating a more polished version in seconds. Some slide elements get converted into a single non-editable image in the process. Worth knowing before you use it on something you need to update later. Availability depends on your Workspace plan level.

During our Tourism Tech Session, one operator added their own website as a source in NotebookLM. They ran deep research, pulled content from the site, then used the Studio to generate a short slide deck pitching an upcoming tour toward a newsletter audience. They also generated a video overview in cartoon style from the same content. The whole process took under ten minutes. The slides were not fully on-brand because the brand style guide had not yet been added as a source. That is the next step: add your logo guidelines, colour specifications, and tone of voice document before generating. The output reflects what you put in.

Things to try today

These steps apply to Google Workspace users. If your business runs on Microsoft 365, Copilot Notebook is Microsoft’s equivalent of NotebookLM and works on similar principles.

1. Set up separate Google accounts for your personal use and business, with each team member as a separate user. This is the foundation everything else depends on.
2. Enable Connected Apps in Gemini by going to the bottom-left settings menu and switching on Workspace integration. This gives Gemini access to your emails, documents, and calendar.
3. Try the @workspace command by asking Gemini a real question about your business. Start with something specific: a client project status, a figure from a spreadsheet, or a supplier email thread.
4. Upload one document to NotebookLM (notebook.google.com) and ask it five questions about your business. Your operations manual, tour guide, or booking policy are good starting points.
5. Add your brand style guide as a source so any content NotebookLM generates reflects your actual brand voice and visual guidelines.
6. Test the Studio tab in NotebookLM by generating a slide deck or infographic from your existing content. It takes under a minute.

The AI tools in your Google Workspace are not separate subscriptions. They are already included. The step most operators are skipping is spending 30 minutes setting them up properly: connecting @workspace in Gemini, uploading your operations manual into NotebookLM, adding your brand style guide as a source. That setup is what separates an interesting demo from a tool that saves you hours every week.

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