Google Now Allows You to Book Hotels and Flights From Search Results

Who doesn’t love Google?  I mean, for the most part, what’s not to love?  In fact, Google always seems to be improving.  They are now finding ways to make it easier for travelers to find flight and hotel fares.  How are they doing this?  Well, they’re going to let you book travel and accommodations right from your search results.  If you want to go to Orlando, simply type that into the search feed, and you’ll be given all kinds of information that you didn’t have before.  Well, you had that information, but you had to dig in order to find it.  This takes away the need for visiting multiple travel sites.  That’s great, isn’t it?

I mean, I’m in favor of anything that makes my life just a little bit easier.  The interesting thing is that Google rolled out this update only a week after they started using AI to predict flight delays in advance of airlines. The push behind this kind of feature is to allow people to book right from their smartphone.  Which is becoming more and more prominent, so I think these kinds of features will pop up with different apps.  Not only that but booking anything related to travel can be challenging, to say the least.

The updates include the ability to scroll through images of the hotel, book flights and hotels and filter results based on date and price adjustments, all without leaving the search results. Over the next few days, Google is also rolling out a new tab layout that will allow users to jump between hotels and flights without the need to input details again. Search for a hotel in a specific city and for a specific date period. Users can then tap the Flights tab to find a flight for that specific city and the date period that has already been selected. The reverse will also work if a user first finds a flight, then taps the Hotel tab to find a hotel in the area.  But you will need the Trips app in order to do that.

The final “Your Trips” tab will allow users to see all their upcoming and past travel reservations from Gmail. The details found in this tab will be specific for each user and no one else will be able to see the information. Trip reservations can be emailed to other people directly from the “Your Trips” tab, while any edits can be made on the Google Trips.

These updates make it super easy to book your hotel using Google as well.  Users can filter their hotel results by price, rating, hotel class, and amenities. They can see the exact location on the map or see other hotels in the area. If a selected hotel can be booked on Google, users can complete the reservation easily using the contact and payment information already stored in their Google Account.

Search for hotels in a specific city on Google > check the dates and number of guests selected are correct > select a room > sign in with your Google Account or input contact information.

Tap “Next – Payment” > tap “Choose card” to pay with Google Payments if signed into your Google Account (alternatively enter your card details) > tap “Reserve a room.”

Travelers will receive a summary email from Google and a confirmation email from the hotel or travel agency once the reservation and payment have been processed.  This is good news for the travel industry, regardless.  Making anything easier is definitely the way to go.