google travel
Latest
Chromecast with Google TV HD review: Super simple 1080p streaming
While it doesn't support 4K content or Dolby Vision HDR, for just $30, the Chromecast with Google TV (HD) is one of the best 1080p streaming TV devices for the money.
Sony's Quantum Dot OLED TVs will start at $3,000
Sony has detailed pricing for its latest TVs, and the Quantum Dot OLED models will start at $3,000.
Google adds some useful features for finding flights and hotels
You can now track flights between cities for six months to find the best prices.
Google suggests the best times to travel and where to stay
There's a lot more to booking a trip than finding the best possible price, and Google is updating its travel site to acknowledge that fact. Swing by the site and you'll find a "when to visit" tab that shows when to go based on crowds, pricing and weather. You might avoid the worst of tourist season by flying in later than usual. And if price is still a pressing factor, a "what you'll pay" tab indicates whether or not the costs will be reasonable at the time you're hoping to go.
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 Trips portal makes it easier to plan vacations online
Google has launched a portal for travel planning, which can help make it a lot easier to organize trips on the web. It's the desktop version of the upgraded hotel and flight search experience the tech giant rolled out for smartphones last year, and it's about time -- some people might prefer doing their planning on a bigger screen, after all. To access it, you simply have to go to google.com/travel or just do a search for travel-related queries, such as "hotels in Tokyo" or "flights to Vancouver," to get results that take you to the new experience.
Google updates Flight Search for Android, iOS
Remember when Google launched its desktop-only Flight Search service back in the fall? Well, now it's made the travel checking tool both Android and iOS friendly. All the key flight-finding features of the desktop version are present: search, discover by location, filter by price, airline and calendar view, and have been optimized for the small screen. Bear in mind that this isn't a native app, El Goog has just tweaked the web-service for the respective mobile browsers, hoping to make those spur of the moment travel plans less taxing. Hit the source link below for further info.
Google launches Flight Search service, Kayak shrugs it off (video)
Google's DOJ-approved acquisition of ITA has finally borne fruit, in the form of Flight Search -- a new tool that aims to streamline the chaos that is online travel booking. The Mountain View contingent unveiled the interface yesterday, with an "early look" at what appears to be a fairly straightforward service. Once you enter your starting point, destination, price range and duration, a list of results will appear in ascending order of fare and duration, below a map displaying each flight's trajectory. From there, you can filter your results by airline, number of layovers or specific departure times, before booking your itinerary on the carrier's site (Google was careful to point out that flight selection and results will not be "influenced by any paid relationships"). At the moment, the service is restricted to a select group of US cities and only features round-trip economy class flights, but Google says future updates and expansions are on the way. We're eager to see how the company dresses up this relatively bare bones platform and, perhaps more importantly, how competing travel sites react to it. Kayak, for one, responded with confident nonchalance to Flight Search, explicitly describing it as an inferior product. "We're confident in our ability to compete, and we believe our flight search technology is superior," the company said, in a statement. "We recognize Google is a formidable competitor but they haven't been successful in every vertical they've entered." Let the games begin. Demo video after the break.
