As the weather gets warmer, people will naturally start planning their next vacation. Google, in response, is adding four new features across multiple platforms on smartphones to help users find great travel deals and create an itinerary.
Arguably the most impactful addition, Google Flights (opens in a new tab) gets a new price guarantee badge to indicate that the current price of a ticket is the lowest it will be for that day. This price will be monitored “daily until checkout, and if it goes down,” Google says it will refund you the difference through Google Pay. The badge is part of a new pilot program, so its scope will be limited. It will only display information about flights departing from the United States.
Google Search, on the other hand, is getting a new Stories-like feature for hotel listings where you can browse through a series of images to give you an idea of what to expect. User reviews and the location’s website will be present on the screen for more information alongside a booking button. The third search feature adds prices for local tourist attractions and tour operators with an accompanying booking link. Famous places in particular will have suggestions under the list “for related experiences”, almost like a mini “city-wide tour”.
And finally, Google Maps (opens in a new tab) will get a Recents tab for the desktop displaying the recently searched locale in the left menu. You can then put everything into a new list to save for the future or share with friends. Recent will be available “worldwide starting next week” with no word on a mobile version yet. That same Maps article mentions other notable travel tools, but that’s all we’ve seen before like Immersive view and augmented reality Live View
Availablity
The Google Search update is currently rolling out to mobile and some are already live. We were able to try out the hotel stories slideshow, but neither the flight guarantee badge nor tourist attraction prices were available at the time of this writing. Additionally, we asked Google if the company plans to expand its badge pilot program to other countries and flights arriving in the United States. This story will be updated later if we have any news.
Before going on vacation, there are a few other tools that we recommend you familiarize yourself with. Google recently launched extreme heat alerts looking (opens in a new tab) to let people know about upcoming heat waves and what to do to stay cool. There is also the tracking tool on Maps allowing users to share their location with friends in case they get lost.
You can learn more about this tracking feature and more by checking out TechRadar’s list of 10 things you didn’t know Google Maps could do.