Travellers busy planning for the upcoming summer holiday travel or beyond will be happy to note that the popular search engine Google has launched new travel centric features or revamped existing ones to help with research and booking options.
Google Flights: Here travellers could track prices for specific dates between two cities, and were informed about price drops for those particular dates. Now, it has been revamped so that travellers can track prices to find deals for any dates; they will receive an email if Google detects lower than typical fares in the next three to six months.
Google Explore: By default, the tool indicates air fares for the chosen destination. But now it has filters to help plan road trips. Travellers can search for places to go to from their chosen destinations by working through filters based on budget, trip length, useful information about the places, etc. During search, viewers will have to click on a pink dot and bubble saying ‘explore nearby’.
Google Maps: ‘Interest layers’ added to the map are expected to help travellers choose where they want to stay at the destination of their choice. The filters will help visitors to find out which is the best area for them to choose to stay depending on their interest – tourist locations, shopping centres, dining dens, universities, etc. The option ‘where to stay’ will provide a convenient neighbourhood guide. As Richard Holden, VP of Google’s Travel Products pointed out in his blog, “For some trips, you may want easy access to a certain landmark or address. You can enter that location in the hotel or vacation rental search bar and you’ll see a toggle to show properties within a 15 or 30 minute trip by foot or car. This might be helpful if you’re going to an event, like a wedding or a conference, and want to stay near the venue.”
Keeping Track: While searching on Google Maps, travellers can save the hotels or the vacation rentals they have been exploring by tapping on the bookmark icon. The information will be available on the ‘saved’ tab when they want to refer to them later.
One of the driving forces behind Google’s interest in strengthening their travel related tools is that the search trend has shown that people are keen to travel. “Whether they’re searching for planes, passports, or their next vacation destination, Q1 travel searches were above Q1 ‘19 pre-pandemic levels,” said Philipp Schindler, SVP and CBO, Google during Google’s parent company Alphabet’s quarter one (Q1) 2022 Earnings call. He also said, “Query growth in categories like ‘beaches and islands’ were up 27 per cent versus 2019, while ‘vacation rentals’ rose 37 per cent. Compared to last year, global searches for ‘passport online’ jumped 80 per cent, while searches for ‘travel insurance surged 2X.”
