During peak travel times like the holidays, hotel prices tend to fluctuate due to demand. Deciding when to travel, where to stay, and how far out to book becomes a daunting task. In order to aid travelers in finding the best hotel deals, Google has rolled out a new Price Insights feature for mobile hotel search. Although this feature has been in test mode since late July, Google made their official announcement on Monday.

How does price insights work?

When viewing a Google Hotel ad module, users are now able to see the Price Insights option box. This feature is composed of three parts:

1. Market Comparison: The Market Comparison feature shows a graph of pricing per night for the hotel, and compares this price to similar hotels in the area. The functionality of this graph is two-fold: it includes an overall range of pricing by night, as well as a price by night comparison to specific hotels with similar ratings in the area. Night-by-night hotel price comparisons are a huge benefit for travelers, however, the feature is currently limited to only two hotels at a time.

2. When to Book: The When to Book feature shows a pricing trend for a traveler’s stay dates over the past 30 days. Users can see if prices for their stay are fluctuating or on an upwards trend. A graph showing a continual price increase over the past month may indicate that travelers should book sooner, rather than later, as demand may continue to rise.

3. Price Evaluation: The Price Evaluation feature compares the user’s price to the typical price of the hotel. While this feature rolled out last month, Google has updated the user interface from a bell curve graph to the linear approach shown below. The graph has been updated to a line with a color spectrum from green, to yellow, to red. User pricing is indicated on the line, with the green end reflecting a good deal and the red end indicating a higher-than-average price for the hotel.

What does this mean for me?

As more Google hotel pricing tools become available to travelers, it is important to find and recognize the effects these features may have on advertisers. Travelers looking to book a stay on mobile may shift toward more competitively priced hotels, so it’s important to maintain price parity from a market competition level.

The updated experience shows users when check-in dates near their search are less expensive. Typically, these lower rates are due to lower occupancy for that check-in date. If you are already leveraging Koddi’s occupancy-based bidding, the improved performance on these check-in dates will already be accounted for in our automation. For hoteliers not leveraging this yet, you’ll want to pay close attention to how your properties’ occupancy is impacting performance. This new feature will move non-date committed users to areas of lower occupancy.