- Google’s latest feature drop might be a big win for summer travel
- As with flights, you can now track prices and set alerts for hotels
- Google Maps can also now pull potential places to visit from screenshots
If you’re a fan of Google Flights, especially for the price tracking data and how the current prices you’re seeing rank against other days, you’re in for a treat. As part of a drop of features fit for upcoming summer travel, Google aims to do for hotels what it’s done for flights.
And yes, it’s as good as it sounds. Now, when you search for hotels on Google, you’ll have the option to ask the search giant to track prices. Essentially, you turn on the feature and then get an alert if there is a price drop.
Similar to flights, you can be a bit descriptive, setting a price range or a ‘don’t bother me if it doesn’t fall’ here. It will even factor in a star rating if you have one selected and the general area where you were searching for a hotel.
Google is rolling out this new hotel price tracking feature globally on desktop and mobile. Once it’s available, you’ll find it right in search, complementing the historical knowledge of hotel pricing history.
This hotel-focused feature is launching alongside some other new functionality from Google, all billed under getting ready for summer travel. The ability to set up price alerts for hotels is undoubtedly the most user-friendly feature and could have the most significant impact. It could potentially help you save on a stay.
Another new feature that could help you better prepare for a trip is screenshot support within Google Maps. If you enable it, Google Maps will look through photos and deliver a list of places you’ve screenshotted.
So, if you’ve been screenshotting TikToks about the best places to eat in New York City or maybe a list of the best ice cream spots in Boston, you won’t need to dig through all of them to find every place mentioned.
Instead, with some AI help, Google Maps will look through your screenshots, find those spots, and list them well in a handy list for you. It’ll live in the app in a list titled “Screenshots,” and this feature is entirely optional.
This feature could prove helpful, but considering that screenshots aren’t just used for travel or remembering specific spots, this could also be a bit of a privacy concern.
It is opt-in only and not on by default, but it is rolling out now to mobile devices with U.S. English on iOS first, with Android following shortly.
