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GOOGLE ROLLED OUT A USER-ORIENTED TOOL FOCUSED ON HOTEL PRICE COMPARISON . IS THAT A GOOD THING ?
By CHLOE RILEY , ASSOCIATE EDITOR
At the end of August ,
Google debuted a new mobile-specific feature allowing users to track hotel prices over time in addition to comparing prices with other , similarly priced hotels in the same destination .
A search would go thusly : A user looks up , say , a hotel in New York City . Then , a graph appears below the search , showing the user how prices have fluctuated for that hotel over the past 30 days . There ’ s a feature on the same page that shows a price graph for that hotel and a set of comparable hotels . As the user scrolls across those comparable hotels , the price graph changes , indicating what that hotel is priced at versus the other comparable hotels , and how they have also fluctuated over the past 30 days .
“ I don ’ t think there ’ s anything else comparable in the industry right now that does this , that tries to digest this for a user and give them a sense of , is this a good price or not based on historical trends here ,” says Richard Holden , who heads Google ’ s product teams in travel . “ We ’ re trying to do this in one page on a mobile device with relatively limited screen real estate and still give you a quick insight .”
Right now , Holden says , the feature is fully organic , meaning objective information with no ad opportunities ( aside from a small ad module component on the page ).
PRICE VERSUS INTEREST So , what does it mean for hotels , especially from a potential revenue angle ? According to Cindy Estis Green , CEO of hotel revenue management company Kalibri Labs , not much .
“ Like any of these price comparison tools , what they tend to do is commoditize the product — it ’ s all built on pricing ,” Green says . “ That ’ s the biggest concern from a hotelier ’ s point of view — if we ’ re creating everything based
November 2018 hotelsmag . com 49