Google Wants To Help You Plan Your Next Vacation

Google is trying to make planning your next trip a little less stressful.

The search giant, which turned 20 this week, is adding suggestions directly to your searches and created a landing page for flight trends and hotel options as the winter holidays approach.

In February 2018, Google aligned its vacation planning tools. The company realised that unless you pay a premium for a package holiday, there are so many elements involved that vacations can be a pain to plan. And now it’s improving its planning tools again.

“There are so many travel booking resources out there it can feel like you spend hours researching flights, hotels and sites before you feel prepared to book your trip,” Berna Erol, product manager, Google Travel, and Emmanuel Marot, product manager, Google Hotels, wrote in a blog post. “In fact, 46 percent of leisure travelers globally think travel planning takes too long, according to our recent research with Phocuswright. To make trip planning faster and effortless, we’re working on new ways to help bring your existing travel plans together—and even plan your next trip.”

The first improvement allows you to resume planning where you left off. This means that even if you haven’t booked anything, when you search for a popular travel destination Google will show you relevant suggestions in Search.

As you start booking parts of your holiday Google will further customise your search results. For example, if you’ve already booked a hotel in Rome or party bus rentals in Riverside, the next time you search for Rome Google will show you flight prices, the weather, and any events taking place.

It also expands users ability to track flight prices during the holidays. The company already offers this for Thanksgiving, but will now extend this through Christmas and New Year. This should save you paying over the odds for a flight.

Last but not least, Google wants to help you choose a hotel based on its location. To enable this Google is assigning each hotel a location score based on information pulled from Google Maps. You can then pick a hotel based on its proximity to your interests.

The feature helps organise things to do, day plans and travel articles when you search major travel destinations. They get even more specific as once you’ve booked a hotel or flight –offering flight prices (assuming that’s not booked), weather, events while you’re there and restaurants near where you’re staying. The trip-planning features will automatically come up whenever a Google search is performed, including day plans and articles about the location.