TRAVEL-PLANNER

Travel Planner MCP Server provides a set of tools to assist with travel-related tasks by leveraging Google Maps and related travel services. It exposes tools such as searchPlaces for discovering places based on a query, getPlaceDetails for retrieving detailed information about a specific place, calculateRoute to determine routes between two locations, and getTimeZone to fetch timezone information for a given location. These capabilities enable an LLM to perform location search, obtain rich place details, compute travel routes with optional modes like driving or walking, and align results with local times. To use the server, configure it in your MCP environment (for example Claude Desktop) to point at the travel-planner MCP server, typically via npx @gongrzhe/server-travelplanner-mcp with your Google Maps API key. The server responds with structured results suitable for downstream reasoning and planning tasks.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js (LTS) and npm installed on your system
• A Google Maps API key with Places, Directions, Geocoding, and Time Zone APIs enabled

Installation steps:

1. Install the MCP server package (recommended via npx): npx @gongrzhe/server-travelplanner-mcp

2. Alternatively install globally and run: npm install -g @gongrzhe/server-travelplanner-mcp GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY=your_api_key @gongrzhe/server-travelplanner-mcp

3. If you are configuring for Claude Desktop, ensure your mcpServers entry is set (see configuration section in the README) and include your Google Maps API key in the environment variables.

4. Verify installation by running the server and testing a simple query through the MCP interface provided by your environment.

Tips and common issues:

• Always supply a valid GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY with the required APIs enabled (Places, Directions, Geocoding, Time Zone).
• When using npx, the package is fetched at runtime; for persistent use, consider a global install or a local deployment in your environment.
• If you encounter permission or API key errors, double-check environment variable propagation in your MCP client configuration.
• The Tools exposed (searchPlaces, getPlaceDetails, calculateRoute, getTimeZone) expect specific input fields as described in the README; ensure correct JSON payloads when calling these tools from your LLM.
• For node-based deployment, you may point to a built dist/index.js path after building the project with npm run build.