Google is up to something. Yes, I know, they are always up to something, but this certain something has the potential to revolutionize the hotel marketplace. Google has begun testing hotel price updates and price drop alerts in Google Now.What does this mean exactly?Basically, if someone has previously booked a hotel and received an email confirmation of their stay, Google Now will read your email and then alert you to price changes. It is likely that Google is only scanning prices that can be found in the Google Hotel Finder rather than searching individual brand.com site, but nonetheless, this is a big deal for both hotels and travelers.
Currently, this seems to be limited only to internal Googlers, but the question remains as to whether or not the company will expand the service to the wider public. The company also seemingly wants to keep this experiment quite hush-hush because the original post from one Google team member has been removed from the Google+ forums.I guess we will just have to wait and see if this goes mainstream, but in the meantime it gives us all a lot to think about. Because most hotel reservations can be canceled within 24-48 hours before your stay, the potential for price alerts should have hoteliers doing some soul searching.How exactly would this affect the ecosystem? Would the cancelation policy differences between brand.com and OTAs change where people would originally book? Are deep discounts for last minute bookings going to be a thing of the past?All we can do at this point is speculate, but if Google does decide to roll this out publicly, the consequences will be more than significant.
Google is up to something. Yes, I know, they are always up to something, but this certain something has the potential to revolutionize the hotel marketplace. Google has begun testing hotel price updates and price drop alerts in Google Now.What does this mean exactly?Basically, if someone has previously booked a hotel and received an email confirmation of their stay, Google Now will read your email and then alert you to price changes. It is likely that Google is only scanning prices that can be found in the Google Hotel Finder rather than searching individual brand.com site, but nonetheless, this is a big deal for both hotels and travelers.
Currently, this seems to be limited only to internal Googlers, but the question remains as to whether or not the company will expand the service to the wider public. The company also seemingly wants to keep this experiment quite hush-hush because the original post from one Google team member has been removed from the Google+ forums.I guess we will just have to wait and see if this goes mainstream, but in the meantime it gives us all a lot to think about. Because most hotel reservations can be canceled within 24-48 hours before your stay, the potential for price alerts should have hoteliers doing some soul searching.How exactly would this affect the ecosystem? Would the cancelation policy differences between brand.com and OTAs change where people would originally book? Are deep discounts for last minute bookings going to be a thing of the past?All we can do at this point is speculate, but if Google does decide to roll this out publicly, the consequences will be more than significant.
