Skift Take
Despite recent gains, Google Flights is still the price-comparison tool of tomorrow, and not today -- unless its scale makes the instant booking of flights a standard way of doing things.
One in 10 frequent flyers on average in North America start their airfare shopping on Google Flights, according to a survey of nearly 2,500 frequent travelers by airline data firm OAG.
But frequent travelers between ages 18 and 32 years old are more than twice (21 percent) as likely as the average traveler to start their search process with Google Flights, says OAG’s research.
Users were asked: “When starting your search process, how do you start your search?”
The multiple choice options included Google Flights, airline website, OTA (online travel agency), travel agent, Bing/Yahoo, discount travel site or app, or other.
Since last summer Google has added some online booking sites to the Flights results. These moves — plus others, like expanding instant booking — may help explain why Google's price-comparison product is gaining traction with the next generation of travelers.
OAG's survey isn't perfect. It isn't clear whether respondents meant they started their flight searches specifically with Google Flights or in the Google search box.
For instance, the survey found that only one out of four travelers use Google Flights at some point during travel searches. Yet the respondents likely meant they search Google for flights, and don't necessarily start at Google Flights per se.
North American users of OAG's Flightview flight status mobile app for iOS and Android were invited this winter to answer questions, and 2,474 replied.
The survey results were not adjusted to reflect a statistically representative portion of the U.S. population. For example, the types of people likely to download such an app will tend to fly more freq
