Many people, myself included, are looking to use this summer to begin traveling again and Google has continued to provide updates to Maps, Search, Travel, and more to ensure it’s prepared to help. It’s actually rolling out a few new features for flights, hotel searches to help you make the most of its services as you try to get your travel plans back on track post COVID.
First, instead of only being able to track prices for dates in the near future, you’ll now be able to track prices to find deals between two cities on any dates. If you toggle this switch as seen below, you’ll get email updates about substantial price drops over the next 3-6 months.
Additionally, since many people who travel prefer to be within walking distance of a specific landmark or address for convenience, you can now enter a location into the hotel or vacation rental search bar and see properties within 15 or 30 minutes by foot or car. Basically, Google is taking some of the manual work out of your wedding or conference planning!
Lastly, Google Travel has had bookmark icons for a little while now, and I’ve spoken about the fact that they work in conjunction with Google Collections, but it seems they’re now drawing attention to the feature to help users save hotels and other interesting locations to a list on the right hand panel.
I’m interested in knowing who is going to be traveling this year and who will be remaining indoors due to the ongoing pandemic. I mentioned “post-COVID”, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over – just that many people and locations are relaxing restrictions and such. Whether or one agrees with this, it’s great to see Google continuing to support their travel tools even when they’re not being used as often.
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