Google Adds Hotel Listings and Room Rates Right Into Google Maps
As part of Google's ongoing efforts to monetize Google Maps, the Mountain View search giant just rolled out a hotel listings feature on the site to "a small portion of users." Users type in their location, choose the nights they're staying, and the sidebar displays a price and a link for booking hotels. The move threatens to totally change how people shop for hotels and to upend the travel industry...maybe.
If we're reading the post correctly on the Google Maps blog, the booking option will be integrated seamlessly and made available for hotels that buy in. Google Maps already displays businesses in the sidebar ordered by search terms, distance, and whatever else is baked into their magical ranking formula. So if you type in "central park new york hotels" under the current system, you get a list of hotels around central park. Typing in "central park new york bars" gives you a list of bars and etcetera. Under the new system you see the same listings in the same order, except hotels that want to pay for ad space get to put in their prices. The price is the ad.
Obviously Google's move will disrupt the business of sites like Travelocity and Expedia at least a little bit, and travel tech site TNooz got some analysts to go on the record saying as much. What no one can predict is how big that disruption will be, and how soon it will kick in. There's an argument to be made that people simply don't buy hotels based on exact street location.
It goes without saying that if you're loyal to one chain, then you're purchasing from their webpage. But even if you want a hotel in downtown New York you might plug in "downtown New York" and then sort by price. Users might also just be reluctant to switch from sites they're already comfortable with, or to decentralize their booking habits, or whatever.
We don't have the data on any of that so its hard to tell. You can be sure, though, that the executives of online travel agencies do have spreadsheets on all those factors. And that they're poring over them this week.
[Photo: Google Lat Long Blog]
Related Stories:
· Experiment to show hotel prices on Google Maps [Google Lat Long Blog]
· Hotels [Jaunted]
· Google Maps [Jaunted]
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