The recently announced new feature of Google called Google destinations will shock the travel industry once again. After their previous successful disruptions as Google Flights and Google Hotels, Google now have found the ultimate tool when it comes to travelling for the consumer. Destinations has been created to make the process of booking a Holiday easier and more exiting. The tool/ app includes flights, hotels, car rentals and activities in the near vicinity.
Currently the app includes about 200 popular holiday destinations around the world. When the user would type in their query like: “Best beach in Phuket” the app will provide the user not only the selection of beaches, ranked in populair order, also will assist the user with information such as flights, nearby hotels as well as an easy tool to browse the best time of the year to travel for the lowest price. As a multi-step process, Google Destinations further walks the user through selecting their flight, booking a hotel, and finding any form of entertainment that they are interested in. These entertainment options can range from national parks to popular restaurants and bars.
Google destinations is only available on a mobile device and only triggers certain searches. As the mobile devise determines your location, it is a great tool to search, get inspired, for the things in your direct location while travelling. The usage of a mobile device during the holidays have grown exponentially and will further increase the transactions via mobile for the future. Hence an application as Google Destinations is the app for the travel community of tomorrow.
What does the hotel need to be aware off?
Google destinations will be used by the traveller to plan their trips, so travel agents and hotels should be aware of the possible impact it could drive and how you can be ready to be part of this new change.
As it is a integration of Google Flights and Google Hotels, it will still apply travel adds as its advertising product. The independent hotel would see that this will increase the usage of OTA business, as it is not easy to be part of the Google Price adds market for starters. The hotel will feel that the cost of Booking will not reduce, but rather increase.
As it is focussed on Mobile and Google, your website should have the following parts covered:
– Your website should be optimized for Mobile, ideally responsive designed
– Your website should have large images and large buttons and have a scrolling feature.
– Mobile SEO is a good mobile user experience.
– Google business listing is a vital part of Google destinations, which means great pictures, Guest feedback and correct information such as Google Maps.
Lastly, keep an eye out on how Destinations on Google evolves. This is certainly not the last of Google’s travel innovation; with the recent announcement of a potential travel assistant app, it’s clear Google wants travelers to depend on them for nearly every aspect of travel.
