Many of us use Google’s flight searching tool to book and compare flights whether it’s for business or leisure. By booking your flight through Google, you can see a wider range of flights and in addition to this, you get to see prices and compare just which flight best meets your budget. But seeing as fares change over time, there’s no easy of way of knowing this other than checking and refreshing all the time and this can be really daunting.
But Google has come up with a solution to that. They announced last week that the next time you use Google’s flight search tool to look up costs, you will now be notified of when fights are expected to increase based on the destination you choose. It’s not just notifying you of changes in costs but also hinting you on how to get the best fares on a route.
If you think your travel might be sometime in future, you can keep track of all flights including pricing to make a better decision when you’re ready. In an email, you’ll be informed of when fares might change so that you don\t check next time and it’s already more than double what you budgeted.
On the mobile side, they are making it easier to manage your flights from the phone so long as you’re signed into your Google account. There was no mention of this becoming a standalone app in future but who knows what could happen in future especially if usage grows.
That’s for flights, they are also making it easier for you to get the best rates with respect to hotels too. So if you search for hotels in Lagos or London, you will be notified of hotels whose prices have changed or have a discount at the moment. This is all done using historical pricing data hotels provide online.
Last month Google announced Trips; trip planning tool that also serves a personalised tour guide. The bottom line here I think is, Google wants to be your new travel agency. This is all part of the automation that’s eating deep into sectors of our economies that many believe would eventually increase unemployment in future.
Paul Femi Balo is the founder and publisher of TechBooky. He covers artificial intelligence, African technology, digital infrastructure, enterprise technology and the global digital economy.
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