Google tips

Booking.com is rolling out an AI Trip Planner to U.S. members of its Genius travel rewards program on its mobile app starting Wednesday, the company announced.

There is no doubt that Booking.com is the dominant hotel room seller among online travel agencies in Europe. It is also apparent that the European Commission is acutely focused on limiting Booking’s grip.

Google has made the search and discovery of their tours and activities easier for tour operators by introducing a new carousel in its search results.

This week Executive Editor Dennis Schaal followed up on a comment made by Tripadvisor’s CEO about his company’s position in the tours and activities space. After looking at the growth of Tripadvisor’s Viator brand against its rival GetYourGuide, Schaal concluded that it wasn’t really a competition as much as it was a tale of these two big online companies competing against much larger offline competition. Read on for the full story, as well as other headlines from this week.

Three airlines — American, Lufthansa and EasyJet — are joining the FAA, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, and Google, among others, on an advisory committee to further develop a model to assess and report the climate impact of flight emissions.

Google is among the platforms that have informed the European Union that it meets the definition of being a “gatekeeper,” and Booking.com stated this week that it expects to meet that criteria “at the end of 2023.”

Richard Holden, who was general manager of Google Travel for the past three years, and led its product management team for almost seven years before that, has been replaced, Skift has learned.

If you are confused about whether Sonder is a short-term rental operator like an Airbnb or a hotel operator, then this will help: Sonder is launching its first hotel collection, Powered by Sonder, which includes 23 Sonder-operated properties in 13 markets.

Has travel been downgraded a tad at Google? This much is clear: Executives don’t talk about travel as among the company’s highest priorities.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, July 28. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

The market for tours, activities, and experiences represents one of the most opportunistic and untapped prospects within the travel industry. It is highly fragmented, with a long tail of small suppliers, and it is rapidly shifting online. That makes it an attractive space for online intermediaries to consolidate market share from small offline players. 

Three key Trivago executives rejoined the company in May just as Google was launching a new advertising unit to attract hotel bookings. Trivago didn’t advertise in the new product, unlike brands such as Booking.com, Priceline, Expedia and Homewood Suites, and Trivago’s absence negatively impacted its second quarter financial results.

A federal judge in the District of Columbia dismissed antitrust claims by dozens of states and the U.S. Department of Justice that the design of Google search results amounted to anticompetitive behavior against rivals ranging from Expedia to Yelp, citing a lack of evidence.

In September 2021, Google launched an advertising product called Google Things To Do, which lists not only the top attractions in a city but also options to book tickets via direct sites or online travel agencies. As we show in the screenshot below, though Google displays paid sponsored listings near the top of the site, its main organic booking list prioritizes the direct website over the sites of aggregators such as Viator, GetYourGuide and Musement, to name a few. 

Booking Holdings has proposed a remedy to a hotel issue that is threatening European Commission approval of its roughly $1.8 billion deal to acquire flight tech company eTraveli Group — show hotels from competitors when someone books a flight.

Over the past decade, language apps like Google Translate have unsurprisingly failed to make language learning obsolete. Unfortunately for monolinguals, (which make up about three-quarters of the United States) speaking another language isn’t quite as simple as typing a sentence into your smartphone.

Google Flights, the airfare search tool from everyone’s favorite omniscient internet entity, has received two significant upgrades, both of which could prove popular with travelers and irk some airlines.

Thanks to tour deals and budget airlines, you don’t necessarily have to spend a small fortune to go on a South African safari anymore—but what if you could experience a bucket-list game drive from the comfort of your computer?

Buying a plane ticket is always a gamble—will the price go up or down if you wait to purchase? With a new feature from Google Flights, you won’t have to wonder any longer. Google just announced the launch of a new price guarantee program that could change the flight booking game.

The Twitter user Shmuli Evers shared a story of canceled flights, scammers, and plenty of red flags.

If navigating through a new city stresses you out, an upcoming update to Google Maps could be a lifesaver on your next trip.