For the past few years, I have been almost exclusively using Google’s online travel tools to book flights. It’s often the most convenient way to sort through dozens of flight options at once, and the interface is decidedly more manageable than what most competitors have to offer. That said, it does lack some features that other sites provide, but this week, the platform came one step closer to being the ultimate online travel companion.
Google has been updating its travel tools rather frequently in recent years, highlighted by the launch of a travel portal in May which unified all of the features and menus into a single webpage. But that was just the beginning, as the new features arriving this week seem built to convince users never to book travel anywhere else.
As Google Travel’s Richard Holden noted in a blog post on Thursday, Google already shows you if prices for a flight you’re about to book are high, low, or typical. But starting today, you will see all the same information for your exact itinerary. Google will also show you how the price has changed over the past few months on some flights, and will even warn you when it expects the price to go up or predicts the price won’t go any lower.
For a limited time, Google is offering a price guarantee for flights it predicts won’t drop in price. If you book a flight on Google Flights between August 13th and September 2nd with Google’s price guarantee, and the price drops, Google will refund you the difference. You don’t even have to check — Google will do the work for you.
Other new features include recommendations for hotels, restaurants, and activities at destinations you’re flying in to, and suggestions for which neighborhoods to stay in depending on how much you’ll willing to spend, what you plan to do on your trip, and more. These should all roll out to Google Travel in the coming weeks.
