Google Flights
Google Flights will now show the ‘Cheapest’ options
Ahead of the busy holiday travel season, Google Flights is rolling out a new “Cheapest” search filter.
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Google Flights tests prominent ‘best’ and ‘cheapest’ sorting for trip options
In a new test, Google Flights is making it easier to sort between the best flights and the cheapest ones when looking up a new trip.
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Google Flights now shows Southwest fares, no more ‘price unavailable’
Previously, Google Flights would show available Southwest flights, but not the actual price. This has officially changed today.
Expand Expanding CloseGoogle Maps will suggest transit, walking alternatives next to driving routes
Ahead of Earth Day, Google Maps is adding a handful of features to make traveling more sustainable, like offering transit and walking alternatives instead of driving.
Expand Expanding CloseGoogle Flights now tells you when the ‘cheapest time to book is’
Google Flights already tells you whether current prices are low, typical, or high, and it will now definitively tell you when the cheapest time to book is.
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Google Flights gets a new independent advisory group to improve emissions tool
Announced in a blog post, Google Flights is getting a new independent advisory group that will help direct the future of the product’s emissions tool.
Expand Expanding CloseGoogle Flights testing low price guarantees with Google Pay refunds
While spring just started, Google is already looking towards summer travel and is announcing new features, like low flight price guarantees.
Expand Expanding CloseGoogle Search letting you find and shop for train tickets, buses also coming
Google is rolling out a trio of updates to its travel features and products today, starting with the ability to shop for train tickets in Search.
Expand Expanding CloseGoogle’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.
Expand Expanding CloseGoogle Flights now lets you see estimated carbon emissions for planned trips
Google is pledging to help us get a better idea of our travel choices with estimated carbon emissions/impact of any journey planned using Google Flights.
Expand Expanding CloseGoogle Flights price guarantee refunds the difference on lower fares for limited time
Google Flights makes it easy to search available flights for your next trip, and now the service is adding price protection for a limited time. With a Google Flights price guarantee, you’ll be refunded the difference if your fare drops.
Google Flights on desktop web updated with Google Material Theme
Travel is one category that Google in recent years has heavily invested in with new tools and machine learning-powered resources. Google Flights is both a Search tool and dedicated site, with the latter recently gaining a Material Theme redesign on the web.
Google Assistant gaining ML-powered flight delay predictions and proactive alerts
One area where Google applied machine learning is flight delay predictions in Search. After launching earlier this year on the web, Google Assistant will now show predicted flight delays and soon provide proactive notification alerts on your phone.
Google Flights & Hotel Search add price insights to tell if you’re booking a good holiday deal
Google Search has a number of built-in travel features with machine learning often applied to find the cheapest tickets and hotel rates. To encourage people to book plans for the holiday season ahead of time, Google is rolling out a number of features to Hotel Search and Google Flights.
Google Search updates hotel lookup features and integrates into Flights
In recent months, Google’s travel features have received frequent updates and added tools that predict flight delays, track hotel prices, and more. Today, in the latest round of new features, Google is aiming to improve hotel lookup and booking, while Google Flights now integrates existing functionality.
Google Flights now predicts delays, tells you exactly what you’re missing out on with ‘Basic Economy’ rates
Booking a flight can be a pain, especially when the fine details aren’t clear. To make things easier, Google is updating its Flights tool to make it clear what you’ll be getting with a ticket, and it’s even going to start predicting delays on flights.
Google Flights now uses machine learning to track hotel prices, Trips adds ‘Discounts’ feature
Google’s suite of travel applications and services are already gearing up for the next traveling season with a number of updates today. Google Flights will now use its machine learning smarts to track hotel prices, while Trips is adding a new Discounts feature.
Google Flights gets a new look on desktop with Material Design front and center
Google has slowly been updating its various desktop services to adopt its Material Design standard and flow better with mobile designs. Now, Google is bringing that to Flights.
Google Trips, Flights, and Destinations add 26 new countries and 22 languages
It can sometimes be hard to keep track of all the services/apps that Google has to offer, but among them, three that can be the most helpful for planning and organizing a trip or vacation include Trips, Flights, and Destinations. Today, Google is releasing these three services in a host of new countries and languages.
Google Flights now recommends cheaper travel/booking dates & nearby airports/hotels
Google is updating its travel tools today with a focus on reducing costs and making planning easier. Google Flights will now suggest travel and booking dates that are less expensive, while Search will recommend nearby airports and hotels that might be cheaper.
Google Assistant/Home can now track flight prices
Google Home and Google Assistant do a lot of things, but they don’t integrate as well as they should with Google’s dozens of other services. Slowly but surely, though, Google is changing that. Today, the company has announced another new feature for Google Assistant and thus, Google Home — flight price tracking.
Google can now help you avoid expensive flights through helpful notifications
Whenever I’m looking for a flight, my first stop for information is Google. The built-in Google Flights tool easily gives me a quick overview of what’s out there and helps me find a good deal. However, that tool has just gotten way more useful.
Google Flight search results now include “Happiness Factors”
Google today has announced a new partnership with Routehappy that adds more detailed information to Google’s Flight service. As part of the partnership, Google Flights will show what Routehappy calls “Happiness Factors,” which include things such as legroom availability, in-seat power, and WiFi.
Routehappy calls the information it sources “Flightpad” and claims that it is the most comprehensive and accurate database for flight information.
Routehappy researches and verifies flight amenities by aircraft, cabin, schedule, and route on a constant basis from hundreds of disparate sources to create Flightpad, the most comprehensive, accurate comparable product attribute dataset for flights worldwide. Flightmatch is a set of powerful and intelligent algorithms that dynamically match and score Happiness Factors, duration, and ratings for billions of possible flight combinations
The information will start to appear now in Google Flights results. You can view them yourself on the Google Flights site now.
Google testing enhanced ‘Flight Explorer’ flight search service
As noticed by TNW, Google appears to be testing a new flight search service that differs from its Google Flights offering launched in September of last year. In our tests, the service, dubbed “Flight Explorer”, is fully accessible through www.google.com/flights/explorer, indicating this might be an upcoming refresh of the Google Flights service. Upon navigating to the Flight Explorer page, Google automatically detects your location for the “From” category and selects what appears to be the next closest country in the “To” section.
The service also provides some improvements over Google’s old flights search, allowing users to select the trip length with a slider under their destination, as well as a number of filters along the top, including: Stops, Airline, Duration, Outbound time, and Return Time. While the service appears to be ready to go, clicking links for any flights that show up in the results takes you to a familiar Google Flights page currently. We expect to hear more about Google’s new Flight Explorer service soon.
