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Behold the rise of the revenge traveler!

After being cooped up inside our houses for two years because of the pandemic and not being able to travel anywhere aside from trips to the supermarket, travel restrictions have finally become more lenient over the past few months. Traveling in and out of the country are now possible as other destinations open up to tourists, too, paving the way for the so-called “revenge travelers”.

Revenge travelers are those who travel now and travel hard to make up for those lost times when they were itching to explore but couldn’t.

However, traveling is not the same as it was before. Well, not exactly. There are more things to consider such as travel requirements and protocols, many of which vary from country to country and from city to city. Planning takes more time because you would have to research a lot more information to ensure that your travel experience will be as smooth as possible.

Data from Google shows how much the needs of the travelers have changed and has become more complex. People now spend more time researching, planning, and looking for more options. The increase in insurance-related searches in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia also shows how travelers now make sure that they will be covered if anything happens, which also helps give them peace of mind while on vacation.

Since planning vacations is now more complicated, we’ll share with you some things that will help you in planning your trip. We already know about how essential Google Maps, Google Street View, and Google Translate have been for travelers! But in this post, we’ll discuss new Google features that you can use when you’re planning a vacation.

WHAT'S COVERED IN THIS GUIDE?

Google Travel Now with COVID Info

This Google feature can help you find your best option for flights, give you a lot of hotel options, and show you the things you can do at a destination. It also includes travel guidelines and restrictions in each place you look up.

On Google Flights, you can search for a flight to a certain destination and you’ll be shown various options from different airlines. Here, you can filter your search according to stops, airlines, prices, times, and more. If you want to look for the cheapest flight available, you can also view a date grid or a price graph where you can see the prices for the weeks or months around your desired date of travel.

If you’re decided on a date for your travel but you don’t want to book just yet, you can track prices for a specific date and receive email updates when the prices change. If your travel dates are flexible but you’re on a budget, it also allows you to track any dates and get email updates when the prices for the flights you’re looking for are low.

Google Hotel will show you available hotels in a destination and show you the prices from different booking websites. Once you’ve picked a hotel and a booking website, you will be redirected there and you can start the booking process.

These are not new features. But what’s fresh is that both the Flight and Hotel sections now provide information related to COVID-19, allowing travelers the option to look for more flexible booking options.

Google Travel Help

The Google Travel Help page will help you find the travel policies, restrictions, and requirements related to COVID-19. It has a section where you can find travel advisory information from different countries.

Explore Tab

Google Travel’s Explore tab will help travelers look up more destinations and see more details about each destination easily. When you look up a place you want to visit, it will show you the things to do, flights, and hotels in one page. For some destinations, it will also show when the peak season and off season is, which could help you decide when you should visit.

The Things to Do section would allow you to look up places you can visit in a destination. Here, you can read information from the place’s wikipedia page as well as reviews that people posted on Google.

If you don’t have a specific destination in mind yet, you can also choose to explore destinations nearby. It will show you places near your location that you can go to.

Travel Insights with Google

Aside from tools for travelers, Google also has a feature that aims to help tourism industry partners know travel insights so they could plan for the future. In Travel Insights with Google, businesses in the travel industry can access information including destination insights and hotel insights with data from Google’s Analytics.

Hotel Center

Another feature that would be useful for businesses in the travel industry, even the smaller ones is the Hotel Center. This could help hotels and travel companies include free booking links in their profiles. These links will show up along with hotel ads when travelers look up hotels on Google.

Business owners can also view the performance of their free booking links.