Google Focuses on Deals With Changes to Mobile Travel Products
Photo Credit: Promotional images from Google related to deal-centric changes to its airline and hotel travel products on mobile devices. Google
Skift Take
It seemingly takes Google forever to roll out new features in travel products such as Hotel Ads and Google Flights. But in light of all that A/B testing going on, Google will continue to take its own sweet time. Google is not beholden to anyone else's schedule. After all, it's Google.
Google announced changes to its mobile hotel and flights products that are aligned around one key learning: Users respond to the promise of a deal.
In a gathering for the press at ABC Kitchen in Manhattan, Richard Holden, a Google vice president of travel products, said hotel rates labeled as a "Deal" in the brand's Google Hotel Ads get about twice as many bookings as rates that aren't labeled as such.
So in response to a query on mobile for "hotels in Chicago," Google labels the $169 rate from Secret Escapes for a July 24 stay at the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel Chicago as a "Deal," and that it is "36% less than usual."
That compares to a $218 rate on Book
