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Google Flights will refund the difference if prices drop unexpectedly
Just after shutting down its Trips travel-planning app, Google has announced a raft of travel-related features for other products, including a flight price guarantee. For a limited time, when it tells you prices won't drop on a trip you book through Google Flights, it'll refund the difference if it's wrong and the cost does get lower before you take off.
Google makes it easier to keep track of travel research
Google is introducing new features that will make it easier for you to keep track of your travel plans. When you're putting a trip together, you might end up juggling a lot of information like flights that you're keeping an eye on, hotel options and restaurants or sites you're interested in visiting. Beginning in October, Your Trips will help you manage all of that info, organizing what you've saved and searched for and letting you resume planning where you left off. Additionally, Google will assist with your planning, surfacing things to do, day plans and travel articles in Search that will become more customized as you settle your dates and hotels reservations.
Google is using AI to predict flight delays
Flight delay alerts are helpful, but they usually depend on airlines notifying you in a timely fashion... and they're not always quick on the draw. Google, however, is happy to fill that gap. It's updating its Flights feature with not only explanations for delays, but predictions. Its machine learning system will use historic flight status info to forecast delays, and flags them when there's at least an 80 percent confidence the prediction will come true. The company stresses that you should still show up on time (you don't want to miss a flight due to pessimism), but this could give you a hint of trouble before you set foot in the airport.
Google adds more tools to help you find travel deals
Here's the thing about vacations: they're fun, but they can also be stressful when you start thinking about how much they'll cost you. Google is trying to take a bit of that stress away by launching a handful of features that can make your trips more affordable. To start with, the tech titan has expanded Flight's ability to save you money. Back in October, the flight search service gained the capability to tell you when prices are expected to increase. Now, it can also tell you when prices are lower than usual and by how much, as well as whether prices won't drop any further for the dates you used in your search query.
Google Home can track flight prices for you
The big knock against Google Home when it launched was simply that it didn't do as much as Amazon's Echo. But Google has been busy adding more features to Home and generally trying to make the speaker even smarter. Today's addition is one for travelers -- you can now ask Google Home to give you info on flight pricing, and it'll start tracking that travel route for you so you can try and get the best deal.
Google Flights adds price-tracking notifications
Booking the cheapest flight can be daunting. Should you book from an airline's site or go with something like Expedia? Plus, there's the trick of using Chrome in Incognito Mode can usually save you a few bucks. Of course none of those tell you when is the best time to buy tickets. That's what Google Flights is hoping to do.
Google tests Flight Explorer tool, offers more visual and powerful ticket searches
Google may have updated its flight search tool for tablets just a couple of months back, but it's been a while since its desktop counterpart saw a refresh. Currently being tested under the call sign "Flight Explorer", the outfit has a new offering that provides a more customizable and visual interface to help root out a suitable plane ticket. While the filters are pretty much the same as the existing Google Flights search engine, there's a new slider to choose trip length, an upfront indication of the best available ticket price for the selected timeframe, along with handy graphs that show price over time, and which yield up specifics when you hover over them with your mouse pointer. There's every chance that these new additions will be merged into Google Flights once any crinkles have been ironed out, but in the meantime there's nothing to stop you using it at the link below. And hey, send us a postcard!
