Google Flight Deals is live: New ways to save on travel with an assist from artificial intelligence
Google just launched Flight Deals, a new artificial intelligence-powered search tool within Google Flights. I've been testing it out, and while it's not perfect, it's another great tool from the company that has what I consider to be the very best flight deal tools in the market.
"Flight Deals is designed for flexible travelers whose number one goal is saving money on their next trip," Google said. "You can describe when, where and how you'd like to travel, and Flight Deals will take care of the rest." The system uses Google's AI models to process what you're looking for, and then uses its own Google Flights data to quickly show you the cheapest and best flights.
For now, Flight Deals remains in beta testing "to see how AI can improve travel planning."
I wanted to give it a try. Read on for some ways it excels — but is also sometimes not so great.
Using Google Flight Deals
Google Flight Deals is fairly easy to use. To access it, go to the Google Flights page and select the "Flight Deals" tab from the main menu bar. It (for now) should be flagged with a "NEW" icon.
I typed in "Long weekend in the Caribbean in November." Chicago was preselected as my location since that's where I'm writing this from, but you can adjust it if you want.
Google gave me 12 options, including an interesting option to the Bahamas on United Airlines.
Once I selected the Nassau option, the site redirected me to the traditional Google Flights page, where the United flight was highlighted. That round-trip, nonstop flight to Nassau for $395 is a pretty nice deal.
As you can see from Google's historical data, this flight is $360 lower than average.
This is where Google really shines — though most of this capability already existed in Google Flights Explore. Still, the AI tool can be a fun way to drill a bit deeper than just an interactive map.
Here's another example of how I gave the tool a deeper push. I asked it to find me a "Ski trip to Switzerland this winter." It came up with two itineraries for winter trips to either St. Moritz or Adelboden. Interesting, though the long flight times were a bit of a bummer (25 hours!).
When I changed the location to New York City, prices dropped even further for that same trip. The trip to Abelboden dropped to just $350 round-trip on Condor, with a much better time of just 11 hours.
But using the new AI tool is not always better, as it doesn't yet seem to be able to pinpoint the best deals every single search.
For example, digging into Google Flights the old-fashioned way pulled up much better deals and more options if I simply put that I wanted to go to Zurich (which offers easy access to lots of ski resorts).
I also asked Google Flight Deals to find me a "Cheap two-week trip to Australia this spring."
While I appreciated a sub-$1,000 flight option, I wasn't particularly impressed by what Google found. Prices seemed pretty average to me for this agenda.
Once again, a quick manual search with Google Flights allowed me to find a deal on All Nippon Airways without any assist from AI.
The other key limitation of this new tool is its difficulty with more targeted searches. This is not the tool to use if you have specific dates and destinations in mind. For example, if you want to go from San Francisco to Las Vegas the week of Thanksgiving, the tool found just one option.
But it did find me a pretty good deal for a last-minute trip to Bozeman, Montana, for this weekend.
Your mileage may vary, but generally, you should give the tool as broad a search term as possible.
You can use it on your computer or on your mobile phone. In another example, Google suggested searching for something like "week-long trip this winter to a city with great food, nonstop."
Bottom line
Google is beta testing a cool new feature for its popular Google Flights pages — AI-aided searches.
Google Flights was already one of my favorite tools for hacking travel. In fact, I like it so much I've written a guide to using it effectively for travel planning; I've also written a complete guide to using Google Flights Explore, one of the incredible features nested within Google Flights.
Google Flight Deals is another welcome addition to an already powerful arsenal of deal-hunting tools for flights.
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