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Google is so confident in its algorithm that it refunds customers if prices are a better deal. Anucha Songsap / EyeEm – Getty Images
Google is taking the travel industry by storm for peak booking times. The Alphabet-owned behemoth has announced new services designed to help consumers find deals this summer, including a first-ever flight price guarantee.
Travelers seem to be most drawn to this last service, which shows users a flight offered by Google Flights when the flight price is low, average, or high compared to historical averages. This helps buyers decide whether to buy a flight or wait.
The new Flight Price Guarantee adds a badge alongside flights where Google makes sure the plane doesn’t get any cheaper before takeoff – if a passenger buys a confirmed flight and it dips to a lower price, the difference between the fares will be refunded. To the customer via Google Pay.
“Nobody likes buyer’s remorse, and that’s especially true for big purchases like plane tickets when prices change day-to-day,” said Richard Holden, executive director of Google Travel, in a blog post about the new features.
To begin with, the new guarantee is a pilot plan only for US flights that have seen price increases and service reductions. Overall, U.S. airline fares rose about 26 percent last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but the number of complaints has quadrupled in recent years. Meanwhile, Delta has been so overwhelmed by demand in its airport lounges that it has had to lay off its own staff due to overcrowding.
There are a few rules to the guarantee: the flights are booked by US residents only, paid in dollars and for flights departing from the state. The tickets must be booked through Google, and if carriers update prices before the search engine’s algorithm has time to catch up, the guarantee can be lost.
According to new data from Bloomberg, Google’s move may come at a time when tourists are looking to tighten their wallets, as 18% of high-income tourists want to cut back on how much they spend on their summer vacation this year.
Hacking a hotel room
The data shows that people with higher incomes tend to spend less on hotel rooms—$500 a night or less—which could be helpful for Google’s new launches.
It launched a new “swipe story format” similar to the user experience of the likes of Instagram and YouTube. When searching for a hotel in a particular city, users can tap on photos of the location before swiping down to bring up the next property.
Reviews from previous guests accompany the photo slider as well as the price at the bottom of the screen, although a feature similar to Google Flights’ algorithm has not been introduced to compare the image with historical prices.
In 2023, Google announced similar comparison capabilities for tourist attractions with a strong focus on AI offerings, not only listing the destination’s official location, but also listing prices from other ticket providers and making reservations.
Why are unit prices increasing?
According to Costar’s November 2022 survey of real estate professionals, luxury unit prices rose 38.4 percent in April 2022 compared to April 2019, said Tom Marchant, founder of Black Tomato luxury travel company. Chance The increase comes as many hotel companies are still trying to recover from the heavy losses caused by the pandemic.
He added that businesses are struggling to retain their employees, which leads to an imbalance in some areas of service quality and cost, “After the pandemic, we have seen a really big increase in demand for experiential travel from this world, looking at our multi-generational family market, which has grown significantly in recent years.”
Marchant added that, contrary to Bloomberg data, the average booking cost with his UK-based company rose from $26,500 to $43,400.
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