Travel Blog
The latest news and notes from the Travel team
Find hotels by travel time
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
(Cross-posted on the
Google Inside Search blog
)
Have you ever wanted to visit somewhere while on vacation and realized that getting there from your hotel would be a real trek? Wouldn’t it be great if you could specify how close you wanted to be to that place when searching for a hotel?
Last year we introduced
Hotel Finder
, an experimental tool to help you find hotels, and today, we’ve extended its functionality with a new way to search: ‘Hotels by Travel Time’. Now if you go to Hotel Finder and enter [
Empire State Building
] in the search box, you’ll see the hotels that you can get to by public transport within 20 minutes.
The areas you can easily reach from your point of interest are spotlighted on the map. If 20 minutes is too long to travel or you like to get around on foot, you can easily change the travel time or your mode of transport (e.g., walking, transit). The map will update automatically to show a new spotlighted area and the nearby hotels. You can also drag the red pin to find hotels near other places you might like to visit.
This feature is not only for tourists. You might be travelling on business and want to make sure you can get to the office or that conference center. Check out this example of hotels near [
Canary Wharf, London
].
As well as searching by travel time, you can define your own area to search within (choose “Hotels in selected area”) or find hotels in a city’s most popular locations:
To try it out, simply go to
Hotel Finder
, search for a city or a point of interest and select “Hotels by travel time”. Keep in mind that Hotel Finder and 'Hotels by travel time' are experimental and filtering by transit time is only available in
cities
where we have partnered with local transit agencies to integrate their data into Google Maps. We’d love to hear what you think: just click the “Send Feedback” link in the right-hand corner of Hotel Finder.
Posted by Konrad Gianno, Software Engineer
Talk with the experts in our new Matrix and OnTheFly discussion forum
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Many expert flyers use our powerful Matrix and OnTheFly search tools to help find the perfect flight. In Matrix, you can use our advanced routing language, calendar view, and multi-city search to construct the right search to meet your needs. OnTheFly gives you a streamlined mobile interface to help you narrow down your options quickly.
Today we added a new
discussion forum
to help users get even more out of Matrix and OnTheFly! The discussion forum provides a venue for all users to get help from a large audience, including Googlers with both an extensive knowledge of Matrix technology and the airline industry, as well as external Matrix and OnTheFly mavens. It’s a space where power users can share tips with one another and learn how other people are using our products.
Interacting with our users in the forum will help us get to know you and your priorities even better. The forum will also supplement our recently revamped help content for
Matrix
and
OnTheFly
as a knowledge repository of tips and tricks for getting the most out of our products.
We hope you’ll drop by the
new forum
and leave us a note!
Posted by Jacqueline Dozier, Consumer Operations
Roll the dice with VEGAS.com
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
It’s Vegas baby! From the lights of the famous Las Vegas Strip to world-class entertainment to celebrity chefs to the Hoover Dam, Vegas has something for everyone.
And the crew over at
VEGAS.com
are experts when it comes to what to do in Vegas. They offer amazing Vegas travel choices, from air packages to hotels to shows to tours to front-of-the-line nightclub passes and beyond. More than 2.5 million unique visitors visit VEGAS.com websites each month. VEGAS.com even runs the concierge desks at Las Vegas Resorts. They’re that plugged in! And now they’re making it easier to fly to their beloved city.
In November 2011, VEGAS.com launched our airfare pricing and shopping system QPX™, to help travelers quickly and easily find the best airfare deals available on their website.
Welcome to the family, VEGAS.com.
To learn more about ITA by Google visit
www.itasoftware.com
.
Posted by Mike Mo, Senior Business Development Manager
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