How travel brands can earn AI recommendations
TripAdvisor, Google Business Profile, OTAs, and reviews help AI understand travel brands. Learn how to strengthen those signals.
Topic: Online travel agency
Google can book your flights, hotels and dinner reservations using AI
Plus, Google added new travel AI tools with Canvas and ways to find deals.
How agentic AI threatens to upend OTAs’ dominance in search
As AI agents take over trip planning, OTAs like Expedia, Booking.com, and Trip.com lose control of discovery, loyalty, and visibility.
3 new Google travel and tour booking features
Three new features for comparing prices, booking additional attractions, and editing prices are now available to attraction and tour operators.
Google introduces three new travel products for hotels
Hotels will now have a much easier streamlined process for adding room rates and availability to their Google Business Profiles.
Google’s free hotel booking links arrive on Search and Maps
The expanded capabilities may be good news for hotels, but not so much for online travel agencies.
Bing launches travel-oriented results pages and a trip-planning hub
The new features may make it even harder for OTAs to compete in the search results.
Google rolls out ticket booking links, ‘Things to do’ ads and an eco-certified badge for hotels
Google’s new travel and leisure products are meant to help businesses bounce back after over a year and a half of disruption.
Google announces additional travel advisory notices in search and updates to its trip planning tools
The user-oriented feature updates will help Google maintain an edge over competitors in the online travel sector.
Google Hotel search showing free listings in results
Google opens the door to more hotels by offering free hotel listings, separate from paid results.
Tripadvisor launches new listings, reputation and data products to help hotels and restaurants gain insights, boost visibility
Restaurants and hotels have been hit especially hard during COVID-19.
Google Search adds flight, hotel search features around COVID-19
Hotels should be aware of the new search filters and features from Google Travel.
Google removes ‘ads’ and ‘sponsored’ labels from flight search results
There will be no more referral fees from partners in flight search, as Google seeks to emphasize price and convenience in rankings.
Bing partners with flight booking sites to bolster flight search offerings
The new flight search experience uses real-time data and direct integrations with airlines.
Google moves hotel pricing chart into the SERP
By improving the consumer travel-search experience Google is also going after a larger share of travel-ad spending.
“Trips” consolidates Google’s travel offerings
Enables advertisers and marketers to reach travelers on desktop and mobile.
Google adds vacation rentals to Hotel Search
Increased competition between hotels and vacation rentals should increase visibility for rental providers -- and boost Google Hotel Ads revenue.
What will Google Hotels mean for online booking sites?
The new site mirrors the UI of Google Flights and could have a similar affect on the hotel booking market.
Google adds new features & improves navigation for mobile hotel & flight searches
Aiming to make travel planning easier on a mobile device, Google is rolling out new tabs that let users switch between hotel, flight and trip details.
Google Hotel Ads now showing nightly price trends
Shows best prices for one-night stays by day when data is available.
Google Flights now shows expected airfare cost increases & filter for hotel discounts
During the coming weeks, Google Flights will also roll out email notifications to alert users when prices expire for tracked flights or routes.
Google Expands Commission-Based Hotel Ads Program
Book on Google ads now available on desktop in the US.
Google Tests Direct Hotel Booking
Google is apparently testing out direct hotel booking. The company is seeking to have hotel searchers book and pay via Google rather than handing off the lead to a third party travel site or hotel site. This was first pointed out by travel news site Tnooz. Other than the example provided in the Tnooz article (a Washington […]
Now It’s Expedia Vs. Priceline As Orbitz Swallowed For $1.6 Billion
After buying Travelocity last month, Expedia grabs Orbitz in competitive bidding.
Travel Search Consolidation: Expedia Buys Rival Travelocity For $280M
The move puts most US and global travel market in just a few hands.
Bing Rolls Out International Hotel Booking Feature & Updates Mobile Search Results
Bing has partnered with TripAdvisor to deliver reviews, booking capabilities and rates for hotel searches in 22 different countries.
Priceline’s Booking.com Surprises As Top AdWords Impression-Earner Among 12,000+ US Travel Advertisers In 2013
Travel advertisers spent three quarters of a billion dollars on Google AdWords in the U.S. last year, according to AdGooroo’s annual review of AdWords activity in the U.S. travel sector. Nearly 12,700 travel advertisers competed for visibility on more than 50,000 keywords. Booking.com captured more impressions on Google AdWords desktop/tablet in the U.S. than any […]
Hotel Search Upgrade: Google Licenses Room 77 Platform
Despite its controversial $700 million acquisition of travel software company ITA several years ago and the launch of Google’s Hotel Finder site, Google has yet to emerge as a force in online travel. That may all be about to change. Bloomberg reported yesterday that Google “is licensing hotel-booking software from Room 77 Inc.” The news […]
Ryanair CEO Claims Airline Is Working With Google On A Flight Search & Comparison Tool
In an interview published by Irish Independent, Irish airlines Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary claims his airline has entered a partnership with Google, and is providing the search engine with flight pricing to help build a travel search and comparison tool. “We’ll be sharing the Ryanair pricing through all of the Google outlets, so when you […]
Google Hotel Finder Goes Mobile
Google’s Hotel Finder, which launched in June 2011, is now available on mobile devices. Google said all you need to do is go to www.google.com/hotels directly on your smart phone and search for your destination. Listings will come up almost immediately, giving you the ability to filter the search results by price, hotel class, user […]
Travelocity-Expedia Deal Gives Travel Search Its Yahoo-Bing Moment
Travelocity, one of the web’s longstanding travel search engines and online travel agencies, is getting out of the travel search business. The company announced a “strategic marketing agreement” yesterday with longtime competitor Expedia, which calls for Expedia to begin powering the technology used on Travelocity.com. As the Wall Street Journal reports, that will include powering […]
Priceline To Buy Travel Search Engine Kayak For $1.8 Billion
Priceline is a public company that owns several other travel brands, including Booking.com, Agoda.com, Cheaptickets.com, Rentalcars.com and a few other travel sites. You can now add leading travel search engine Kayak.com to that list. Priceline announced that it was buying the travel site for $1.8 billion (in cash and stock). Priceline and Booking.com are reasonably strong […]
Google Experimenting With “Promoted Hotels” Ads on Hotel Finder
Google is testing a new ad format on its Hotel Finder product that lets marketers bid to appear at the top of search results. Promoted Hotels ads are ranked based on a combination of bid and quality score, and are sold on a CPC basis. News of the experiment was first reported on Tnooz. The […]
Big Chains Launch “Hulu For Hotels”
Several major hotel chains have launched what might be described as “Hulu for hotels,” a new travel search site called Roomkey. According to Tnooz, the consortium includes Choice Hotels, Hilton, Hyatt, InterContinental, Marriott and Wyndham Hotels. Starwood, operator of Sheraton and W hotels, is not among them. Hotels have been struggling for years to get […]
Google Tests Its Hotel Finder As A New Comparison Ad Atop Search Results
Hotel industry, you’re on notice: Google appears to be running a test that places its own Google Hotel Finder at the top of very competitive, hotel-related queries. Search Engine Land reader Alex, who works in the hospitality industry, tipped us to this development and at least one of our SEL editors was able to replicate […]
Google Travel Search Takes Flight With First ITA Travel Product
Google has made what amounts to a promising downpayment on more ambitious travel search tools with its new Flight Search, debuting today. Launching initially for a select group of US cities Google users will have access to an expanded range of airline search options and a much more verticalized experience than has been available in […]
Search For Hotels With Google Hotel Finder
Forget using Google Maps when you want to find a hotel to stay at for a business trip or family vacation! You can now use Google’s Hotel Finder. Google Hotel Finder is a search tool specifically designed to make it easier to find and compare hotels for your trips. The features include: Draw simple shapes […]
NY Times Argues Against Google-ITA Acquisition — Delicately
In a curious editorial yesterday the NY Times makes a kind of luke-warm argument against Google’s acquisition of travel software company ITA. Here’s the operative paragraph: Regulators must consider that if Google extends its dominance to the business of steering online customers to airlines and travel agencies, it would be in a position to charge […]
Microsoft Joins FairSearch Group Opposing Google-ITA Acquisition
Microsoft has long and openly been involved in opposing some of Google’s high-profile deals and acquisitions. It helped scuttle the proposed Google-Yahoo search deal that paved the way for its own deal with Yahoo. It unsuccessfully opposed the DoubleClick and AdMob acquisitions. It also owns Ciao, one of the complainants that helped launch the recent […]
Senator Calls On DOJ To Limit Google’s ITA Purchase
Citing a litany of concerns over competition, airfare, and technology, a US Senator is calling on the Justice Department to put conditions on Google’s purchase of travel software company ITA. In a letter to the DOJ on Wednesday, Senator Herb Kohl outlined a number of concerns over Google’s purchase of ITA — the independent software […]