Google launches new travel planning tools
Google's new travel tools help you decide when to book flights, choose where to stay and pick up your trip research where you left off.
Slowly but surely, Google is expanding its range of travel features, which now extend from hotel and flight bookings to full travel planning tools. This week, the tech giant launched more features focused specifically on planning what to do and booking accommodation.
Perhaps the most interesting tool is a new landing page showing the best time to book flights, particularly around holidays such as Christmas, New Year and Easter, based on prices from previous years. The new feature still has some limitations in the number of city combinations it supports. But for anyone travelling on one of its 25 supported routes, it could genuinely help save money, provided, of course, that pricing trends remain similar to the previous year's.
The same page will show hotel deals, although it is generated from Google Maps search and many people are still unaware of it. Once you have decided on a destination, the search engine's new hotel location option can help you find the best place to stay. Results summarise information about nearby bars, must-see sights, monuments and public transport access, based on Maps data.
The new feature also tells you how to get to the airport or travel from there to any location, which is rather useful.
Your Trips also has new features due to launch this coming October. This app helps users organise everything to do with their trip. As well as helping fill gaps in existing trips, it will provide useful information during planning and show everything you have already searched for, even after leaving the page.
"For example, if you recently started researching trips to Milan, we will show you potentially useful information in Your Trips, such as flight prices you are tracking (if any), a flight to a specific destination, or hotel searches and places you have already saved," the company says on its blog. "That way, you can easily pick up your research when you return to Google. To see Your Trips, search for 'my trips' on Google, or tap the Flights or Hotels tab on your phone," it continues.
With tourism and low-cost travel on the rise, this update has arrived at the right time. Imagine you want to travel to Barcelona, London or Paris: the search engine will tell you how much that long weekend, romantic Valentine's Day or gig by the band you really want to see should cost. All with suggestions for the best places to eat, what not to miss and the monuments most visited by tourists.
