Google Hotels Revamps Mobile Features as Its Ambitions Expand
Photo Credit: Google is slowly rolling out changes worldwide to its hotel search. Skift
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Google wants consumers to buy more travel on it. That may prompt industry players to closely patrol the gray line between the search giant referring more customers to them and Google becoming customers' first choice for booking trips.
Google has been rolling out changes to its hotel search on mobile and desktop platforms as part of a broader, year-long realignment of its travel strategy.
And as the company steps up its efforts in travel-product development, we expect Google to further ramp up Google Hotels from both consumer-facing and tech-stack perspectives in a way that has parallels to what it has recently done with Google Flights.
Not everyone is happy with Google parent Alphabet Inc.'s more assertive effort to move from being a research tool to becoming even more of a booking venue.
"This is clearly a situation where Google is sucking a lot of profitability out of the travel space, not just for us, but for, frankly, for all the online travel agencies and other online players," said Greg Maffei, CEO of Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings, during an investor day presentation mid-month. Maffei's holding company owns a controlling stake in TripAdvisor, where he serves as chairman.
Google announced a series o
