Skift Take
Google is making it easier for travel shoppers to find and use its flight or hotel search through some design changes rolling out in the coming weeks. Watch out, Kayak and Skyscanner. Airlines and hotels will have to pay attention, too.
Google is putting it all together: In the coming weeks, Google will knit together some of its travel services via design changes.
The Alphabet Inc.-owned company's search-advertising business continues to drive a majority of its revenues a couple of decades after its founding. But developing its own travel products, which are still advertising-driven, is adding a twist.
On Tuesday Google announced a gradual rollout of new user experience changes to its travel tools.
Since its travel push began in earnest in 2011, a shopper who has done a flight search and who has then wanted to do a hotel search for the same dates has had to re-enter the itinerary details.
Now Google is adding a navigation bar across the top of the search features. After a flight search is done, a shopper will be able to tap "hotels" and see the same dates and destination already entered for a lodging search.
One of Skift's travel megatrends of 2018 was that Google’s product-led vision is bearing fruit. By "product-led vision", we mean engineers solving specific problems for particular types of users rather than executives in a suite creating a grand strategy.
A case in point: For mobile users, getting speedy results is a key issue. Google engineers have ensured that its flight search fetches answers faster than leading price-comparison companies Kayak, owned by Priceline Group, and Skyscanner, owned by Ctrip.
Changes to the User Experience
In that spirit, Google is rolling out changes to its travel tools that may seem like minor design tweaks but that cumulatively indicate its direction and momentum. The changes will come first to mobile web in the U.S. and spread across other platforms and geography.
The changes will almost certainly expose more Google users to the company's travel tools. A user will be able to type in "visit new york" and see the full set of Google travel tools as a sugges
