Trips is dead, but Google’s travel feature ambitions are only just beginning

Now that Google Trips is officially dead for mobiles, Google’s looking elsewhere to beef up its travel offerings.

As promised, a bevy of new updates will be pushed to Search and Google Maps in the future, inspired by Trips. The first however makes searching for and comparing prices of flights much easier.

Google Flights, its airfare comparison portal within Search, will now display the typical, high and low prices for flights on your itinerary.

“Plus, for some flights we’ll show you how the price has changed over the past few months and notify you when we predict the price may go up soon or won’t get any lower,” it added on its blog.

We’ve double checked for South African flights, and it’s here too, but alerts and monitoring will only work for some flights within the US.

Google Trips’ online portal, which the company didn’t shut down, is also getting new features now provides recommendations for hotels, restaurants and things to do on your adventure.

And finally, Trips online will now let users compare the hotel prices on a per neighbourhood basis across the world’s cities.

“Let’s say you’re planning a trip to Paris. Once you’ve searched for hotels for your destination and dates, click on ‘Where to stay’ at the top of your hotel results,” explained Google.

“For each neighborhood you’ll see a description, the average price and more. You’ll be able to filter your results for hotels in a specific neighborhood.”

What’s coming to Google Maps?

Trips’ ability to show your itinerary and offline travel data, for one.

Selecting “Your Places” and “Upcoming” will display your future destinations. If it includes an airport, tapping on that will also bring up flight information and booking codes.

New updates coming to Google Maps however will include a “Reservations” tab listing all this info, including hotel bookings and more.

Feature image: Google