Google Travel adds flight price notifications and a limited time flight price guarantee
Google is building out its travel product with more features to convince you to use it to book flights and plan trips directly, instead of having to go anywhere else. The company is adding more sophisticated pricing features, including historical price comparison for specific itineraries - and notifications about when a price is likely to spike or when it's at the absolute lowest. It's also offering a pricing guarantee for bookings made in the next couple of weeks, so you'll get be refunded the difference if Google says a flight price won't drop and it subsequently does.
For any flights booked through Google that originate in the U.S. (regardless of destination) between August 13 and September 2, for which Google sends you an alert notifying you that the price is predicted to be at its lowest, the company will alert you if it does drop and then send you a refund on the price difference between what it predicted (ie., what you paid) and the lowest actual fare.
It's an attractive deal, and the limited time offer is probably only even available because this is new and Google wants to make sure people feel absolutely comfortable trusting their predictions. The company likely has the most readily available, cross-airline information about flight availability, route popularity and price in the world, however, backed by some of the most sophisticated machine learning on the planet, so it sounds like it's probably a pretty safe bet for them to make.
Google Travel is also adding a number of features once you actually book you trip - it'll suggest next steps for planning your trip, and then help you find the best neighbourhoods, hotels, restaurants and stuff to do. Plus, reservations and other trip details will automatically carry over to the Google Maps app on your iOS or Android.
Overall, it's clear that Google is making an aggressive play to own your overall travel and trip planning - and it has the advantage of having more data, better engineering, and a whole lot more in the way of design skills when compared to just about every dedicated travel booking company out there.
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