Destinations on Google delivers new travel planning experience for mobile users

A mobile search for a continent, country or state, along with the word "destination" or "vacation," will return a series of travel options.

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After adding new filters to its Google Flights site, Google announced today a new travel planning experience for mobile users.

Destinations on Google is designed to create an easy, intuitive travel-related mobile search process, without navigating through multiple websites to determine the best travel dates, locations, prices and more.

To perform a Destinations search via the Google app, users can say or enter a specific state, country or continent along with the word “destination” or “vacation.” Google will return in a collection of travel options based on the specified location.

Here’s a screen shot of a search for “Europe destination”:

Google destination search

According to the announcement, the listed airfare and hotel prices are powered by Google Flights and Google’s hotel search.

Users have access to a variety of filters within Destinations, including the ability to narrow a search based on interests:

Google destination interests

The flexible dates option lets users search by which month they want to travel so that they can compare travel rates across multiple destinations:

Google destination dates

There is also an “Explore” tab that lets users search without specific dates to determine the best time to visit a specific location.

The price filter includes a slider tool so that travelers can limit search options by costs.

Google destination price

In addition to the interests, dates and price filters, Destinations includes a “Plan a trip” feature to compare hotel and flight costs.

“We show you highs and lows for the next six months, so you can find the right price tag for you,” says Google. “As you slide left or right, the results instantly update with real-time fares and rates.”

The “Plan a trip” feature also lets users customize their results based on flight and hotel preferences.

Google shared the following video, highlighting how its new Destinations search works:

Google says its travel-related mobile searches have increased 50 percent during the last year — more evidence supporting Google’s longstanding position that we live in a mobile-first world.


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About the author

Amy Gesenhues
Contributor
Amy Gesenhues was a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Search Engine Land, MarTech and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.

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