Travel Blog
The latest news and notes from the Travel team
Dreaming where to go with your AAdvantage miles?
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Want to go on that dream vacation with your American Airlines’ AAdvantage miles but not sure where you can fly? Redeeming miles for flights just got easier now that American has launched the new
Award Map
, powered by our
QPX™ Reward Shopping
feature.
This new tool helps users quickly and easily search for and book award travel using their AAdvantage miles. Users simply search with criteria, such as destination category by region or interest, and the miles they wish to use, in addition to regular search parameters like their departure airport, dates of travel and cabin preferences. Behind the scenes the QPX Reward Shopping engine quickly computes a huge number of possibilities to present the user with all available award flight options within their desired mileage amount. Available destinations are then displayed on American’s intuitive Award Map, making it easy for travelers to evaluate all their options and book using their AAdvantage miles.
“We’ve had a long standing relationship with American Airlines, helping them innovate with pricing and shopping since 2004,” said Gianni Marostica, Commercial Director for Travel at Google. “We were thrilled to help them take this latest innovation from idea to implementation in a few short months. Congratulations to the team at American Airlines on this exciting and successful launch.”
Posted by Nate Nottke, Senior Technical Account Manager
Bon Voyage, Buon Viaggio, Buen Viaje, Bon Viatge, Boa Viaxe!
Monday, March 18, 2013
If you live in the UK, France, Italy, Spain or the Netherlands -- and are thinking of hiking the Swiss Alps, visiting the Greek Isles, taking a bite out of the Big Apple in NYC or simply planning a business trip --
Flight Search
is now available to make planning your trip easier.
Starting today, you can use Flight Search to quickly find, compare and book flights originating from each of these countries to any airport in the world. You'll also be able to search for flights from airports in these countries and see prices in your local currency. Additionally, you can conduct searches in 8 languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Basque, Catalan, Galician and Dutch -- and see prices in your local currency.
Smarter travel planning
Let’s say you’ve decided the Greek Isles are your vacation destination of choice, but you’re not sure which airport offers the most affordable fares. By typing ‘Greece’ as your destination, you’ll be able to quickly compare the cost of the different options, viewing live prices on the map.
Likewise, if you’re looking to take the family to New York City but are unsure of the best time to go, you can click on our ‘Lowest fares’ icon to see which dates will get you the lowest fare.
We choose the best flights based on cost and total travel time, while covering a variety of departure times and airlines. But, you can always view longer or more expensive flights by selecting, 'Show all'. Flight Search makes it easy for you to:
Find flights quickly
. As you make changes to dates, destinations and filters, results will load fast in a format that’s easy to scan.
Discover places to go on a map
. Explore possible destinations and view live ticket prices by surfing the map. You can filter by price, airline or flight duration.
Figure out the best time to travel
. Quickly see which travel dates are least expensive by dragging the date selector forward or backward, or click the "Lowest fares" icon to compare lots of dates at once.
See a simple list of the most relevant flights
. Use our easy-to-scan list or compare options and find the flight that's most convenient, least expensive, wi-fi enabled or simply the one that best meets your needs.
Sometimes we are not able to show results for every single airline and we will make that clear. We are working to expand our relationship with other airlines, and bring Flight Search to more countries and in more languages.
To access Flight Search in your local country or language, type:
google.co.uk/flights/
google.fr/flights/
google.it/flights/
google.es/flights/
google.nl/flights/
We’ve worked to provide you with fast results as you browse a simple list of the most relevant flights, figure out when to travel, and get ideas about where to go and book your trip online. We hope you’ll enjoy planning your next trip with
Flight Search
! Bon Voyage!
Posted by Noam Ben Haim, Senior Product Manager, Travel
Virgin Atlantic makes comparison shopping easier
Friday, March 15, 2013
Virgin Atlantic, one of the world's leading airlines, recently launched new functionality and a completely new website at
www.virgin-atlantic.com
. Using our QPX™ pricing and shopping technology, the new website improves the overall shopping process and lets flyers search for flights in a much faster manner -- across all global markets where Virgin Atlantic flies. Since re-launching the website five months ago, Virgin Atlantic has seen a sizeable increase in online bookings and nearly 5% in cabin uplift.
Virgin Atlantic first launched these capabilities for their European, United States, South African and Australian markets. They recently completed launches for Hong Kong, Nigeria and China. In April of this year, their global rollout will be complete, launching to the Caribbean, UAE, Japan, Ghana and India.
With the new capabilities, Virgin Atlantic can now present flyers with more information, earlier in the process -- such as offering solutions for all classes of service on the initial flight selection page. This lets flyers quickly choose between Economy, Premium Economy and Upper Class options to find the best time, cost and class of service across a 7-day window.
As part of the launch, Virgin Atlantic also added videos about in-flight amenities and services to their search page, to aid conversion and upsell. These videos let travelers get a first-hand view of what it’s like to fly in the different cabin classes.
Michael Daventry, Manager of eBusiness Channel Delivery & Operations, Virgin Atlantic said, “We’ve been very pleased with the results of this launch! When flyers see the value they can get for the higher fares, they often trade up. The changes we’ve made to our website, in partnership with our IT team and web development agency LBi, plus the ease of integration that ITA offers, will allow us to introduce new features and functionality to our customers in a much faster manner. Later this year we hope to add: interline shopping, the ability to combine award miles and money, and award calendar shopping. We’ll be able to deliver the same great online service for all our customer needs.”
Virgin Atlantic is a great customer and we’re really pleased with the success they’ve had so far. We look forward to helping them achieve their goals throughout 2013.
Posted by Brian Mulvey, Program Manager
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