Google Innovates Flights and Hotel Searches

The company has announced new tools that can improve the user experience when searching for travel-related information.

Google has developed new tools in order to improve customers’ travel-related searches. According to Condé Nast Traveler, the company has announced innovations in travel that were inspired by Google’s shopping tools and data, and these changes are meant to improve the user experience on Google Flights and hotel searches.

“Mobile has become the new normal,” said Jonathan Alferness, Google’s vice president of product management for shopping and travel products at a media event in New York City this morning. “We are expecting that mobile will play a huge role in both shopping and travel.”

The first improvement comes to Google Flights. Previously, users could go to the website and search for itineraries and price fluctuations on a particular route over time and would be forced to return to Google Flights to check that information again. Now users can browse multiple airlines, dates and routes and create an alert on certain itineraries to keep an eye on prices, receiving that information directly on their e-mail account.

The hotel search also features new innovations. Condé Nast Traveler reports that a new algorithm “keeps track of what an average market rate for a hotel room is in a given city, then calls out any rates that meet the ‘good deal’ standard. … Hotels that get the coveted “deal” marker on Google currently score twice as many bookings as non-deals.”

The amount of information on any given hotel has also increased on the search page. Whereas before, users had the contact information, maps, website, reviews and rates, they will now receive special deals for loyalty-program members and offers to join such programs if not already enrolled.

“It’s our opportunity to help hotels book more efficiently with consumers,” Richard Holden, vice president of travel at Google. “We offer it to any partner who would like to have it, but we think in a mobile context there’s a great opportunity to make booking more efficient. We don’t own the transaction. We’re a pass-through to make the booking seamless for someone who has their Google payment account saved [in their wallet].”

[Photo: Two Six Digital]