• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Jeff Bezos wants the bottom half of earners to pay zero income tax—he says nurses making just $75K should save $12K a year

2

Indeed chief economist says we’re entering an era of ‘great mismatch’ thanks to a generational imbalance of workers

3

Microsoft reports are exposing AI's real cost problem: Using the tech is more expensive than paying human employees

1

Jeff Bezos wants the bottom half of earners to pay zero income tax—he says nurses making just $75K should save $12K a year

2

Indeed chief economist says we’re entering an era of ‘great mismatch’ thanks to a generational imbalance of workers

3

Microsoft reports are exposing AI's real cost problem: Using the tech is more expensive than paying human employees
Google

This New Google Tool Tells You When to Book Holiday Travel Flights

By
Bloomberg
Bloomberg
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Bloomberg
Bloomberg
Down Arrow Button Icon
August 29, 2018, 10:02 AM ET

It’s the most wonderful time of the year—and by that, I mean the lazy, late days of summer. New insights from Google also reveal that right now—late August—might also be the best time to start thinking about your holiday travels if you want to get the best flight or hotel deal.

In fact, flight searches for Thanksgiving will spike by 76 percent in September. By October, they’ll increase by a further 95 percent. Book now, and you can pay half as much as one of those procrastinators.

“Research suggests that consumers are more stressed about what they’re paying for flights and hotels than just about any other consumer purchase that they make,” Richard Holden, vice president of Google Travel, told Bloomberg. Buyer’s remorse, he says, is far more common when you’re shopping for an airfare than, say, a flatscreen TV. “People worry that they’ll miss out on a future price drop, so we’ve decided to make our price insights richer—telling consumers whether what they’re paying is a low price, a high one, or a fair one.”

The result isn’t just this handy tool, which uses last year’s prices to predict the rise and fall of airfares across the 25 most popular U.S. routes for Thanksgiving, the winter holidays, and New Year’s. It’s a deluge of new features that will inspire confidence in your future travel purchases, no matter where or when you’re going.

Hotel Price Insights

Power users of Google Flights will know that price insights already existed when you looked up tickets. Flights from New York to Paris, for instance, show red and green numbers under each day of the month to contextualize average prices based on the calendar—explaining whether they were above or below the mean. Now, for the first time, there’s a comparable tool for hotel prices.

Type “New York City hotels” into your Google app, and you’ll trigger the engine. (It works for any city in the world, big or small—from Tokyo to Kanazawa.) Then select your dates and your favorite property, and a new feature will pop up. Look for the “compare market prices” button and you’ll be able to see whether current prices are fluctuating and whether they’re low, typical, or high—all based on prices for similarly rated hotels in the same vicinity.

“It’s hard to know whether $300 is a good price for a hotel on a particular night—this gives you a sense based on star ratings, and later we’ll take even more data into account. It’s all about comprehensiveness and transparency,” said Holden.

Picking a Destination That’s on Sale

Ever decided that you want to go to London only to find that, because of a big convention, every hotel is booked and flight prices have skyrocketed? An upgrade to Google’s Explore feature will help prevent that. To find it, pull up Google flights on web or mobile, then click “Explore Destinations.”

It lets you input basic parameters for your next vacation—your home city, how long you want to be away, and what time of year you’d like to travel—before populating a world map with estimated flight prices. Want to head somewhere for Christmas, for instance? Leaving from New York, you’ll find great deals in cities from Barcelona to Amsterdam to Zurich—where today it showed that flights are roughly $175 cheaper than normal.

Green numbers mean you’re getting a relative bargain: 30 percent below the average price or more. Plus, a list of destinations on the left-hand side contextualizes how much you’re saving in each place.

“Three out of five users tell us they’re willing to shift their dates or destinations, so this will help them figure out where to get great value when they’re feeling flexible,” said Holden.

Thinking Beyond the Holidays

Google’s holiday flight tool represents a gradual expansion toward more personalized, more transparent travel bookings. “This isn’t a brand-new path for us, we’re just making a greater investment in it now—we’ve been seeing yields from consumers who say they find this useful.”

As such, it’s still a work in progress. Holiday flight predictions are currently based only on 2017 numbers, but looking at the last five years, for example, would be more statistically significant. Holden says the company will add more data to the flight and hotel tools to make the “great value” predictions better over time. And as consumer behavior provides a clearer picture of how the tool is being used, more destinations will be added.

“Over time we also want to provide more holistic planning support for the consumer,” said Holden, hinting toward improved destination insights that consider your existing flight and hotel purchases to serve up recommendations for what to do on the ground.

If only he could do the same for your holiday gift list.

About the Author
By Bloomberg
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in

gf
SuccessEntrepreneurship
Meet the 32-year-old who is America’s only full-time spelling bee coach — he charges up to $180 per hour
By Ben Nuckols and The Associated PressMay 23, 2026
20 minutes ago
o
PoliticsOregon
Oregon Democrats wrote a gas tax, watched it get destroyed and now Jeff Merkley has a fight
By Claire Rush and The Associated PressMay 23, 2026
31 minutes ago
t
North AmericaMedia
‘Hello, Goodbye’: Paul McCartney closed the lights on a Late Show that CBS couldn’t cancel quietly
By Mark Kennedy and The Associated PressMay 23, 2026
39 minutes ago
w
Environmentclimate change
The asphalt industry has a heat problem — and cities are running out of patience
By Aya Diab, Alexa St. John and The Associated PressMay 23, 2026
1 hour ago
d
HealthHospitals
Meet the hospital dogs ‘making a real difference’ by getting sick kids to smile
By Laura Ungar and The Associated PressMay 23, 2026
1 hour ago
t
PoliticsCongress
Rebellious Republicans find voice in Trump apostate Thom Tillis: ‘stupid on stilts’ and a ‘payout for punks’
By Lisa Mascaro, Joey Cappelletti and The Associated PressMay 23, 2026
1 hour ago

Most Popular

Jeff Bezos wants the bottom half of earners to pay zero income tax—he says nurses making just $75K should save $12K a year
Success
Jeff Bezos wants the bottom half of earners to pay zero income tax—he says nurses making just $75K should save $12K a year
By Preston ForeMay 21, 2026
2 days ago
Indeed chief economist says we’re entering an era of ‘great mismatch’ thanks to a generational imbalance of workers
Success
Indeed chief economist says we’re entering an era of ‘great mismatch’ thanks to a generational imbalance of workers
By Emma BurleighMay 22, 2026
1 day ago
Microsoft reports are exposing AI's real cost problem: Using the tech is more expensive than paying human employees
AI
Microsoft reports are exposing AI's real cost problem: Using the tech is more expensive than paying human employees
By Jake AngeloMay 22, 2026
1 day ago
Apple’s Steve Wozniak says he cofounded the tech giant after 5 rejections from HP—not to ‘make money.’ For years, his paycheck was just $50
Success
Apple’s Steve Wozniak says he cofounded the tech giant after 5 rejections from HP—not to ‘make money.’ For years, his paycheck was just $50
By Preston ForeMay 22, 2026
1 day ago
Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’ 
Workplace Culture
Bolt CEO says he let go of his entire HR team for creating problems that didn’t exist: ‘Those problems disappeared when I let them go’ 
By Preston ForeMay 19, 2026
4 days ago
Despite a $500 million net worth, Shaq just finished his fourth degree. He warns graduates: 'Your character will take you further than your resume'
Success
Despite a $500 million net worth, Shaq just finished his fourth degree. He warns graduates: 'Your character will take you further than your resume'
By Preston ForeMay 20, 2026
3 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.