You’ve probably encounteredGoogle Flightswhen planning a trip, though you might have just scrolled past it to visit your favorite travel website. If so, you’re making a mistake, as Google Flights is a powerful tool that can help you find the best flights, and now, it can even save you some money. It has many features designed to make booking a flight more pleasant, which will help start your trip off on the right foot.
Don’t let the wealth of tools on Google Flights intimidate you, as we’ll guide you through everything Google Flights can do and show you how to use it to save lots of money on your next flight.
What is Google Flights?
Google Flights is an online service that helps you bookflightsthrough various third-party booking websites. It’s part of Google’s larger Google Travel initiative.
At a basic level, you’re able to use it like any other travel site - enter where you’re leaving from and where you want to go, and it’ll do the rest. So, if you want to go from JFK to Las Vegas, you’d use the search tool on the front page to enter JFK in theWhere fromfield and Las Vegas in theWhere tofield. From there, choose the depart and return dates, select the number of travelers, whether you want Economy, Premium Economy, Business, or First Class, and then clickSearch. Next, you’ll see the flight options available for your selected trip, and Google will show you different places to book it and the price for each one.
Where Google Flights gets interesting is outside of the simple search option. If you click the Explore button without entering a destination, Google will show you the prices to travel to all different destinations worldwide. If you know that you want to travel somewhere but aren’t sure where then Google Flights is a fun way to choose based on the price to get away. If you dig into the explore options, you can guide it to fine-tune it a little more. For example, you could tell it you want to do a two-week trip in the next three months, and it’ll offer suggestions based on that.
If Google has access to your location from your browser, it’ll also show you suggested destinations from your starting point and how much it’ll cost to get there. As of this writing, I can fly from Hartford to Orlando for $58, which seems like a steal. Even if you aren’t actually looking to book a trip now, it’s fun to check on the prices and get an idea of where to go when you are ready to travel again.
How to use Google Flights to save money
To go along with the search functionality,Google recently addednew features designed to help you decide when to book. Google Flights can tell you when the best time to book a particular route is based on historical data. This will work for popular routes where Google has sufficient data, so you might not see booking suggestions if you’re looking to travel from a rural location to a less popular destination.
If the cheapest time to book is now, Google Flights will tell you that, but if it isn’t, it’ll advise you when to book, so you can skip the flyer’s remorse when you find out you overpaid for your flight. This information is on the search results page in a drop-down box. The actual dates will show right on the main page, but if you expand the drop-down, you can see more data about the price history.
If you (thanks to Google’s help) decide now isn’t the best time to book, you can turn on price tracking to be alerted when the price for your trip is low. To turn it on, click the button near the top-left of the search results page next toTrack Prices.Google Flights will notify you that you’ll be emailed about flights during your selected date range.
Finally, Google added a price guarantee to some results. With this, Google will pay you the difference between what you paid and the lower price if it drops after you book.
