Skift Take
How do airline network planners determine where to restart routes when no one is flying after Covid-19 destroyed assumptions about consumer habits? Enter Google with its huge data set about consumer whims — maybe not the ultimate decider about airline flight schedules, but another factor to weigh.
Google is rolling out a new tool that provides airline partners with search data that carriers are using to help decide which routes to restart and when.
Unlike existing data from Google for airlines about their own performance across Google products, the newly provided data provides a market-wide view of consumer intent based on flight searches regardless of airline.
Lufthansa and Air France were two partners willing to go on the record about their use of the tool, which is a supplement to performance information already existing in the Google Flights Reporting Center, and airlines' own data resources.
Dozens of airlines and online travel agencies, and more recently hotels and car rental firms in every region of the world are using the new data tool, Demand Explorer, according to Gianni Marostica, Google's managing director of business development for travel. He spoke Thursday with Skift exclusively about the new tool, which was rolled out in mid-March.
"Flight Demand Explorer has been a tremendous addition to our internal data to get a clear picture of the current flights market," said M
