Google upgrades flight and hotel search to provide price grid views & more

Google announced several upgrades to both their flight search and hotel search features to aid searchers in finding the most economical options for their trips.

Rolling out on Google Flights is the ability to ability to click on “Dates” to see the calendar view of date combinations with the cheapest prices highlighted in green and the most expensive in red. You can also see price graphs over time if you have a certain length of trip in mind. This feature is available on mobile and rolling out to desktop later this year. Here is a GIF of these flight search features in action:

Often, flying to different nearby cities’ airports can save you on flight costs. Google also added the ability to see all nearby airports on an interactive map, view the distance between each one and your final destination and select the most convenient airports to include in your results. Here is a screen shot of this feature:

Google Hotel search added a nightly rate in the calendar view that shows you a similar grid of prices for the hotel you selected. You can also check out price trends for a hotel to see how rates change over time. Here is a GIF of that in action:

Also, Google formally announced the hotel price labels on the interactive maps in this blog post. This is something we covered a month ago: