My Google Map Blog

While many people will celebrate the holidays at home this year, 40 percent of Americans are still planning to travel. Here are a few ways Google can help you make informed travel decisions or revisit trips from holidays past.

Stay up to date on the latest travel information

When you search on Google for information about hotels, flights or things to do, check to see if there’s a COVID-19 travel advisory or restriction for your destination. If there are no restrictions, you can see indicators for travel reopening, like the percentage of flights operating or hotels with availability, directly in your Search results. On google.com/travel you can also see trends for flight and hotel availability over the past six months, as well as links to local resources, like the number of COVID-19 cases in the area.

Book accommodation confidently

Earlier this year we added a hotel “Free cancellation” filter on Search and google.com/travel to help you easily find properties with a refundable rate. In addition to refundable rates, many hotels and vacation rentals are taking additional measures to ensure the safety of guests in response to COVID-19. Now when you search for a place to stay on google.com/travel and view a specific property, you may see a tip when additional health and safety precautions, like enhanced cleaning, are being taken. Tap on the “About” tab to see the full list.

We’re working with hotels and vacation rental providers, as well as industry associations, to add more health and safety information to the results you see. If you’re a hotel owner, verify your business using Google My Business, and let guests know what measures you’re taking to keep them safe by adding health and safety attributes to your Business Profile. 

See local COVID-19 information 

If you’re planning to visit a new city, you can use the COVID layer in Google Maps to quickly get information about COVID-19 cases in the area—so you can make more informed decisions about where to go and what to do. 

Stay informed on the road

Once you’re headed out on your trip, you can use Google Maps to see helpful safety alerts along the way. If you’re driving, we’ll notify you about COVID-19 checkpoints and restrictions along your route, like when crossing national borders. If you plan to take public transportation, we’ll show you alerts from local transit agencies, so you can quickly know if government mandates impact transit services or require you to wear a mask while riding the bus, subway, or train.

Get nostalgic & relive past trips

For those not traveling this holiday season, you can use new features in Google Maps or Google Photos to take a walk down memory lane. If you’re using Maps on Android, you can soon access the new “Trips” tab in Timeline to see a summary of your past vacations, along with information about the places you visited, the total kilometers traveled, and the modes of transportation you used. If you choose to turn on your Location History setting, you can use Trips in Timeline as a handy tool if you’re feeling nostalgic or want to share vacation recommendations with friends or family. 

You can also see and share your past trip itineraries including hotels, restaurants and other places you’ve received reservation confirmations for in your Gmail by going togoogle.com/travel and tapping on the “Trips” tab. 

In Google Photos, you can already see photos grouped by location with theinteractive map view. In the coming weeks, we’re bringing Timeline to the Photos map view, so you can easily see the paths you took on a certain day alongside your photos—whether you captured that epic shot while hiking through Yellowstone, or while driving down the scenic Pacific Coast Highway. You can choose to show or hide your Timeline from your map view's settings in Photos at any time.

If you will be traveling over the holidays, here’s a handy checklist to help you make informed decisions as you plan.

We’re already a week into August, but there’s still time to book a trip before summer ends--or to get a jump start on holiday travel planning. After you’ve decided where to go for your next trip, these new features can help you get the best price and make travel planning a little simpler. 

Book flights with more confidence

When it comes to finding flights, it’s hard to know what the “right” price is--and even harder to know when to book. We already show you whether prices for a flight route are high, low or typical. Starting today you may see the same insights for your exact itinerary. Plus, for some flights we’ll show you how the price has changed over the past few months and notify you when we predict the price may go up soon or won’t get any lower. 

On top of this, we’re taking an additional step to give you more confidence when booking a flight. When we predict the price won’t decrease for select itineraries booked between August 13 and September 2, we’ll guarantee the price won’t drop, and we’ll refund you the difference if it does. 

We’ll monitor the price for you and if the price drops any time before departure, we’ll send you an email letting you know once your flight takes off--so there’s no work on your end. This feature is available for select itineraries originating in the U.S. with domestic or international destinations.

Get suggestions to continue planning your trip

If you book a flight and receive a confirmation in Gmail, you’ll see your upcoming trip when you go to google.com/travel. Starting this week, we’ll assist you with recommendations for next steps—such as searching for hotels, restaurants and things to do. When you click on your trip, you’ll see your flights have been automatically added to a timeline. If you haven’t received a confirmation in Gmail for some of your trip reservations, you can now easily add them to your timeline.

Find the best neighborhood, and hotel, for you

When you’re booking a hotel, you may need intel on neighborhoods to stay in and what you’ll expect to pay. In the next few weeks, you’ll see helpful information about top neighborhoods, the best time to visit and typical hotel prices at the top of your hotel results on desktop at google.com/travel globally. 

Let’s say you’re planning a trip to Paris. Once you’ve searched for hotels for your destination and dates, click on “Where to stay” at the top of your hotel results. For each neighborhood you’ll see a description, the average price and more. You’ll be able to filter your results for hotels in a specific neighborhood. 

We’ll also help you pick the best place to stay by showing you personalized hotel results including places you’ve searched for or stayed at before, and hotels that are close to points of interest you’ve searched for. 

When you’re ready to go on your trip, you can now use Google Maps to access your travel reservations, explore the city you’re visiting or navigate from place to place. Read more about the new features that make Google Maps the perfect travel companion here. Whether you’re looking for the best flight prices and neighborhood for your stay, or you’re on-the-go during your trip, Google can help with your travel needs from start to finish.