Planning a holiday can be a bit of a pain, but Google wants to make things a little easier. The company has launched a series of updates designed to make finding bargains on flights and hotels a little easier.
Now, when you search Google for specific types of hotels, such as “hotels under $150 per night that have a pool,” the search engine will surface results that fit the requirements you set. You can then filter the results based on extra parameters, like “pet-friendly.”
Search results will also highlight deals on hotels that are cheaper than the normal rate. According to a blog post from the company, the deals are identified by Google’s algorithms that can detect when there’s a significant decrease in price. Not only that, but tests indicate that hotels marked as a deal ended up getting around two times as many bookings as hotels without the label.
Of course, Google Flights hasn’t been left out. Instead of having to continuously check the service for great deals, you can now opt to track flight price changes, and you’ll be notified of changes by email and in Google Now cars. The feature will be rolling out over the next few weeks in all of the 26 countries where Google Flights is available.
If you’re a flexible traveler, both of these new services will be able to notify you of changes you could make to your itinerary that will drastically change the price. This feature was actually already present in Google Flights, but it will now also appear in hotel bookings.
The new features are similar to features that already exist in services like Expedia, however Google hopes that the new features will cut out the need to go to other sites and will make things a little easier when booking a trip. While the updates are designed to be mobile-first, they’ll be available on desktop as well.
