26th January 2022
Have you heard of Google Travel? It’s a relatively underused Google service but one you may have stumbled upon when searching for an upcoming holiday or business trip.
If you aren’t familiar with Google Travel, it’s a web application that allows you to book flights, search for trips and all the features you probably use on similar websites like Expedia or Booking.com. The service has been available since 2016 as was previously known as Google Trips.
Like many of the Google apps you need a Google account to use the app, however, this is an in-browser app rather than a standalone app that you can download onto your smartphone.
Let’s take a look at some of the features Google Travel offers.
Flight search
A pretty intuitive search feature that allows you to add your dates and locations. You can customise your search with the addition of filters like what airlines you want to travel with, connecting airports, baggage allowance and flight duration.
Track prices
It can be tricky to know whether you are getting a good deal on a flight without using lots of different sites to compare, as well as online comparison sites. Google Travel has a few features that are pretty handy to help you get better value for your money.
There is a ‘Best departing flights’ button which will help inform you on whether the price you are seeing is typical for the time at which you hope to travel.
The ‘track prices’ toggle is also a really handy feature that means you will receive email updates when prices fluctuate, meaning you will be able to know as soon as prices increase or decrease.
Browse for inspiration
If you aren’t a fan of a package style holiday and like to customise each part of your trip, Google Travel offers great features to search and set trip parameters.
The ‘Interests’ feature allows you to narrow your search to the type of trip you are interested in, for example, Beach or Skiing.
You can also customise how you want to travel in the Travel mode section which means you can choose your mode of transport such as plane or car, for example.
Manage itineraries
After you have your trip booked, it’s always exciting to start planning your itinerary. If you choose to book your flights directly through Google Travel, your flight details will automatically move into your flight itinerary section.
From there you can start adding things to your itinerary such as sights you want to see, places you’d like to eat. There’s also some helpful resources in this section which will be curated based on your trip. You can view frequently asked questions about the area you are traveling to, or read articles to help inspire your itinerary further.
Book and rent accommodation
It’s not only flight search and bookings that Google Travel offers. You can also go a step further and book your accommodation for your trip. Keeping your whole trip in one, easily accessed place.
You can search, filter and book hotels and rent properties. Google will show you both a list view and a map view so you can handpick your accommodation based on amenities, location or rental styles like cottages or guest houses.
How can tourism businesses use Google Travel?
There’s no way around it, Google is the travel and tourism sectors most critical partner. As the most used search engine in the world it offers businesses a vast reach for potential customers. However, this expansion into the Travel sector could mean that Google are “self-preferencing” their products above others in searches. A lot of Travel businesses feel unfairly treated in this sense, however, Google Advertising means that these businesses can add spend behind their adverts to rank higher in the search list.
Without this spend behind their product Travel businesses risk appearing too far down the list and risk users not scrolling that far to reach their accommodation, for example.
Finnbar Cornwall, Google’s Industry leader in travel, commented on the issue:
“I don’t believe that travel is a fixed pie where everyone is fighting for a slice of a fixed pie. There is an opportunity to bring travel to many more people, to take the friction out of it and if we can do that at Google . . . that will bring more people into travel and bring more people to British Airways, to Booking.com.”