Google’s Travel site now lets you find hotels near specific sites, nearby car trips, more

Google’s unified Travel site is adding a number of new features to help “plan your summer travel” across Flights, Hotels (including searching near specific sites), and the Explore capability.

For starters, Google Flights already lets users “Track prices” for a specific period, but “Any dates” can now be toggled to receive an “email if [Google] detect[s] lower than typical fares in the next 3-6 months.” This can be enabled right next to the existing switch.

Hotels search is adding “new interest layers on the map, you can quickly see which areas have the most options for dining, shopping or sightseeing.” In addition to public transport, these options appear in the top-left corner of the map view. Google will highlight the specified areas with color. Additionally:

Beginning today, you can enter that location in the hotel or vacation rental search bar and you’ll see a toggle to show properties within a 15 or 30 minute trip by foot or car. This might be helpful if you’re going to an event, like a wedding or a conference, and want to stay near the venue.

This can be enabled by a new pill at the bottom of the Google map view after searching for specific sites in Hotel search on Travel. One can always manually do this, but it’s good that the company has directly integrated such a common workflow:

Similarly, you’ll be able to bookmark hotels and vacation rental locations for easy reference when planning. 

To see your saved properties, look for the Saved tab on mobile or the right hand panel on desktop.

Lastly, the Explore tool on Google’s Travel site will let “Explore nearby”:

Tap this feature to narrow your search to places you can drive to in a few hours, and select any destination to see helpful information including average hotel prices or what kind of weather to expect.