Tag: Hotel Finder

Google Hotel Finder Finally Gets Ability To Book Reservations From Your Phone

Google launched Hotel Finder back in 2011, and now, they’ve finally added the ability to book hotels from your mobile device. This seems like a pretty key feature to have in such an offering, but better late than never, right?

Now, if you go to google.com/hotels on your phone, you can search, filter your results and book your hotel through one of Google’s partners.

“You can filter the search results by price, hotel class, user rating and distance,” says product manager Maciek Nowakowski. “Select a hotel to learn more: photos, hotel amenities, reviews and its location on a map can all be conveniently accessed from the same page. You can also save hotels that appeal to you into a short list for easy comparison by pressing the star.”

You can use Google Wallet to book the reservation if you find the “Buy with Google” button, but if you don’t use Wallet, you can still just enter your payment info.

While Hotel Finder is available in over 100 countries, the new booking capability is only available in the U.S. for now.

Image: Google

November 5, 2013
Google Is Using Logic to Fight Waste With Hotel Finder

‘Hotel Finder” by Google has refined its functionality to include ‘Hotels by Travel Time’. I like it! I have to ask why they never thought to have this before. So many times i’ve booked a hotel that the search said was near my event and when I arrived, I found the two destinations were miles apart. Google has addressed this issue with a refinement to their ‘Hotel Finder’ tool. ‘Find Hotels by Travel Time’ is an enhancement which allows users to select their mode of transportation and allowable travel time to find appropriately located accommodations.

Choose from mass transit, pedestrian, car, whatever; the search will give you the time and distance for the means you choose. This way you won’t be wasting time on unplanned travel and unforeseen obstacles.

If you’re going to a conference and there’s a hotel right across the street, it might make sense to stay there even if it costs more money. You could save some extra cash by not getting a rental car and make the whole experience more efficient and enjoyable.

Half the time a trip could be more fun if I could centralize my accommodations to the events and activities I will be attending. Freeing myself from the burden of navigating foreign landscapes could be key to having the most pleasant experiences. Sounds like Google’s on that.

January 23, 2012
Google Hotel Finder Launched

Google introduced something called Hotel Finder today, which it describes as an experimental search tool designed to help users find “that perfect hotel.”

Essentially, it’s a hotel search engine, but it comes with an interesting user interface.

“To help you figure out where the action is, Hotel Finder shines a ‘tourist spotlight’ on the most visited areas of U.S. cities,” explains software engineer Andrew McCarthy. “We select an initial shape for you based on what’s most popular or you can draw a shape around the area where you want to stay, e.g. on the ocean or along Sunset Boulevard.”

“In the ‘Compared to typical’ section, you can see how each hotel’s price compares to its historical average, so you can tell if it’s good value for your stay,” he continues. “You no longer need to open a new browser tab for each hotel result, and then go hunting around for pictures. When you select a hotel in Hotel Finder, we show you a collage of images, Google Places reviews, and key information right within the list. You can even use keyboard shortcuts (“J” and “K”) to flip through the results quickly, just like in Google Reader and News.”

Users can add hotels to a shortlist to keep track of the ones they’re interested in. It also points you to various booking options.

All of those worried about Google providing its own versions of different kind of search results over third-party sites will probably show some concern about this (though Google has so far made no indication that these results will actually be shown within regular Google results).

It’s interesting that Google has already released something that it specifically calls an “experimental search tool,” just after announcing that it is closing down Google Labs, where the company has normally launched its “experiments”. The shut down was billed as a refocusing by Google. It appears that Google has hardly missed a beat when it comes to experimental launches.

Hotel Finder is currently only available in the U.S.

July 28, 2011