Google Travel has been aggressively expanding – especially with their recently revamped user experience on both mobile and desktop.
Google Travel has added some new functionalities to Search, Flights, Hotels, and Maps to make it much easier to plan trips.
Over the past year, Google has added the ability to book hotel and flight reservations directly from Search and can even select dates and compare prices on the same search page. Now travelers no longer need to conduct multiple searches or click into other websites. Once a hotel or flight is selected, you can book directly through Google with a saved payment method or go straight to the hotel or airline’s check-out page in just one click!
According to an interview last month with Google’s VP of Product Management, Richard Holden, user engagement with photos and reviews has doubled since the new renovations have been made to Google’s travel tools.
Holden also stated that Google Hotel’s ads have increased leads 60% year-over-year to partners and now ¼ of clicks that go off to hotel websites come from Maps.
Google currently has hundreds of engineers specifically devoted to travel and Google Hotels is now in all markets around the world. We will continue to monitor the space as Google marches toward world domination in the travel space.