Google Is Testing Vacation Rental Search in Its Hotel Price-Comparison Tool
Photo Credit: This apartment, based in Paris's 15th arrondissement (or neighborhood), is available on Booking.com and was listed yesterday for a booking of 8 to 14 people via Google's "hotel search." Booking.com
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In tests involving about 7,000 property listings in Europe, Google is checking if travelers would like to use it to search and book vacation rentals. Online travel rivals should be on the alert.
In the past month, some Google searches have been revealing an option to comparison-shop vacation rentals.
In our checks Tuesday, Skift could find vacation rental filters for Barcelona, Berlin, Bordeaux, Cologne, Dresden, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Madrid, Munich, Milan, Naples, Nice, Nuremberg, Paris, Palermo, Porto, Reims, Rome, Seville, and Venice.
The results are limited to a small subset of alternative lodging inventory similar to traditional vacation rentals. Collectively we counted about 7,000 property listings. That is a mere smattering of the potential rental listings in Europe.
Our search Tuesday of google.com and google.co.uk for the term "hotels in Paris" unveiled the option to filter the results by choosing "vacation rental" from a drop-down menu for "accommodation type."
In the Paris example, applying that filter turned up only 420 apartments — a sliver of the more than 50,000 available for rent in that city according to short-term rental leader Airbnb.
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