I’m no psychic, but I’m ready to make two predictions for travel this summer: 1) Eco-tourism will be super-simplified; and 2) Travelers will toss out their chunky guidebooks in favor of the new eco-friendly travel resource called Summer of Green , unveiled earlier today by Google Maps .

The site, which is far more stylized than your average Google experience, features complete city guides that focus on green travel options, as recommended by the Earth Day Network. The guides are available for New York, Orlando, Las Vegas, L.A. and San Francisco.

Each guide offers virtual tours and directs travelers to organic spas and restaurants, green hotels and eco-friendly car rentals and activities, like parks and nature museums through Google Maps’ amazing mash-up technology.

To test drive the site, I popped onto to the New York guide and found an impressive number of virtual walking tours, from Ground Zero to the Central Park Reservoir.

I opted for SoHo, and suddenly found myself on a pretty cool virtual stroll via Google’s satellite images. The tour included a bit of local history, and directions to the nearest sushi spot and vitamin emporium. The site also directed me to the city’s bike maps, vegan restaurants, and parks.

My next test was a search for organic restaurants in Santa Fe, a travel hotspot that I visit often. Google turned up a list of some great places, many of which are off-the-beaten-path and that I’d recommend to a friend. Next I tried environmentally-friendly hotels in Santa Fe and found some fairly famous local institutions, as well as few oddball hits, like Advanced Janitor Supply and Carpet Care.

Nonetheless, I plan to bookmark Summer of Green and savor whatever good stuff it turns up.

Summer of Green