Google Flights app may find best travel deals

SAN FRANCISCO: Google wants people to use its browser-based flight search and booking tool, called Flights, on their smartphones more often. The company has integrated other hotel booking options in Flights and has incorporated AI (artificial intelligence) to deliver smarter suggestions to users. Flights is not a separate app, but is built into the Chrome and Google apps for Android and iOS and can be accessed by typing "flights" in the search bar. It allows users to search, compare prices and book flight tickets.

To help users get the best prices, Flights is turning to AI. According to Google, it will use machine learning and statistical analysis of historical flights data to suggest the best dates in the year to book tickets to the same destination. So if you are booking tickets to Dubai, Flights will provide a comment on how expensive or cheap the tickets are at that point compared to the usual prices. If the prices for a particular destination are unlikely to vary, it will tell users that waiting won't help and they can book the ticket whenever they like. It picks the prices directly from the airline companies.

Google now provides users the option to check out hotels from the Flights section. So if users are searching for flights to a particular destination and want to book a hotel immediately, they can click on the Hotels section at the top of the page. Users won't have to enter the travel dates and destination again, as the hotels section will automatically utilize the data entered in Flights to show available hotels with their prices. The feature also works the other way round, so if users are looking for hotels, they can access the flight options form from the same page.

Flights will now provide travel suggestions to users in the 'More Destinations' page. It will help them explore weekend getaways closer to their existing location. The 'Your Trips' section will show all upcoming and past travel bookings made by users on Flights or which involves Gmail.