If you are thinking of travelling, Google has a great web app for planning your trip covering all aspects of your holiday. From the Google Travel site, you can make reservations for hotels and flights, find the best prices for your travel dates and even gives you suggestions for locations to visit if you are researching where to go.
There is integration with Gmail, and the site can track your reservations for accommodation, flights, car rentals, restaurant bookings, and train or bus travel.
Some new features have just been added to the Google Travel site around planning an upcoming trip.
If you don’t have specific dates in mind for your trip, you can now find out the best months to travel to your chosen destination. Make a decision when to travel based on average weather temperatures, how busy the destination is at any time of year, and average hotel prices.
From the Google Travel site, select the Hotels tab, enter your destination, and take a look through the new tabs which appear above the hotel names.
On the When To Visit tab, take a look through monthly information including average temperatures, how busy the city is at that time of year, and how expensive hotels are.
On the What You’ll Pay tab, review the average pricing for the date range specified, and see if hotel prices at that time of year are cheap, typical, or expensive. Prices are grouped based on hotel star ratings – you can tick ratings and click Apply to filter the hotel listings to match your criteria. If prices are expensive for your chosen date range, it may be because of a particular event happening at that time. It may be better to choose a different date range to travel for that destination when prices are cheaper.
On the Where To Stay tab, you can take a look through the individual districts of the destination you are travelling to. Clicking on a district will show information on the vibe of an area, a location score, and the average cost of hotels in that area. When clicking on an individual area, the map will highlight that area so you can see exactly where it is in the city. You can click Add Area for the areas you would like to stay in and then click Apply to filter the hotel listings to match your criteria.
When you choose the hotel you wish to stay at, find the best prices from a number of different booking providers. You can look at the prices for your entire stay, or look at prices per night before you choose who to book through.
If you are accessing the site using a mobile phone, you can add a shortcut to Google Travel to your home screen by tapping Add Shortcut from the Trips screen. This will make it easier to go back to researching your upcoming trip.
I have used Google Travel for previous holidays, and I have found it made things a lot easier by tracking everything in the one place, giving me ideas of things to do in the city I was travelling to, and offering the best prices for my flights and accommodation. I will definitely continue to use Google Travel for all of my travel adventures for business or pleasure in the future!
