Google's stealth lab tests new travel products

When Google sneezes, everyone gets a cold - or at least a variation of the phrase that suggests the company is so influential in travel that when it tries things, people watch on nervously.

Roll back ten years or so, and Google's involvement in the travel industry was fairly indirect, although not unsubstantial by any means.

Adwords and search engine optimisation, two marketing and content disciplines that travel brands would agonise over, were essentially all for Google's benefit.

The levels of spend were not at the same quantities for most companies as they are now (lest we forget, Booking Holdings and Expedia Group splashed out north of $10 billion between them last year), yet sizeable volumes of money were heading the way of Google's Silicon Valley headquarters.

Companies would agonise over the best tactics in both areas, attempting to ensure they featured on the first page of the "ten blue links" or had smart ways of outbidding their rivals in keywords.

Here and now

In 2018, Google has moved on considerably, with four core services that have varying degrees of impact on the industry.

Google Flights and Hotel Ads are established in their respective areas, Adwords and SEO remain hugely powerful mechanisms to get users in the front door of a brand further down the purchase funnel, and the Google Trips app is there to handle everything for the user post-booking and during a trip.

Yet, as Google's influence has evolved and direct products have launched, its peers around the industry have attempted to find out what is next on the radar for the company.

Sure, there's a bunch of stuff that Google does that, again, will have an indirect influence on travel decision making or shopping of products, such as artificial intelligence or voice technology.

But what about actual services?

Outside of the product divisions in the company is Google's Area 120, an internal incubator created in 2016, where teams tinker with dozens of different early stage experiments.

Many will be shut down and some may eventually go on to become actual products.

Although the Area 120 projects are separate from and unrelated to other groups in the company, such as travel, there is a shuffling of team members in and out (for example, one of the product leads for Google Trips is currently in residence at Area 120).

What's on Area 120's mind?

It is impossible to know how many travel-related tools have not made the grade at Area 120, but some do get to see some daylight and are tested on people outside of 120, or the industry... quietly.

PhocusWire has learned of one such product in recent weeks, known under the codename "Yondo".

It's the first foray that Google has made that specifically targets corporate travel, in particular employees working for small businesses.

Area 120 has recently been inviting individuals around the industry to view a demo and test the product (after signing NDAs).

From what we've learned so far, the Google-powered app will create instant travel budgets for employees of a company.

It then also uses a mechanism to incentivize the workforce to save money on their corporate travel plans.

As one external source points out, Yondo sounds in some respects very similar to Rocketrip, the startup launched by Dan Ruch in 2013 which has since gone on to raise $17 million in funding.

Other services in a familiar vein could be Travelperk (founded by the creator of Hotel Ninjas, a Spanish startup which was later sold to Booking.com) or Tripactions, the source who works at a large corporate travel management company suggests.

Before such companies or others in the corporate travel companies catch that Google-shared cold, an official at Area 120 warns that the Yondo project "is a very early experiment" and declines to share any further details.

Another project in the works revolves around its existing Local Guides service, a community of "explorers" who write reviews of places on Google.

Area 120 has been working on a new travel app connected to the Local Guides program and is presumably looking for "influencers" to get involved.

An application form to get access to the new product is for current members only, with a heavy emphasis on details of social media handles and blogs.

* Correction: An earlier version of this post misidentified Area 120.

* Check out Google's Oliver Heckmann, vice president of travel and shopping, doing a keynote at the Phocuswright Conference 2017.