At a press event today in New York, Google announced a series of updates coming to search results aimed at travel planners looking to get the best deals on flights and accommodations.
Now, when you search for specific types of hotels like “pet-friendly and under $175 a night,” Google can surface results nearest you (or whatever location in your search query) that fits those requirements. You can also narrow results down by clicking various filters, like “budget” or “luxury.”
Google will now also highlight deals when certain hotels are cheaper than normal. Richard Holden, VP of Product Management for Google Travel, said that while Google has advertising partners, results are shown organically to best match what the user is searching for.
“These deals are automatically identified by our algorithms when we see a significant reduction in price,” Google says. “In our early tests, we’ve seen that hotels marked as deals receive about twice as many bookings as other hotels.”
If you’re flexible, Google will also tell you which dates to adjust your travel to to get a lower rate. This functionality already exists for Google Flights, and is now being brought over to hotel bookings to complete the travel planning process.
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