In a test, Google has prototyped a service that alerts Android users about drops in a hotel rate in the day or so after a reservation is made.
In the test, the alerts were provided via the company's Google Now service, according to a report by Search Engine Roundtable.
Following up on the story, Search Engine Land asked the company about the project. Google said, in the blog's paraphrase, "it’s very much an internal experiment with no current plans to launch in that format."
Word of the test materialized when a Google employee praised it on his Google Plus page. That post has since been taken down.
It was unclear if Google Now was extracting hotel reservation information from people's emails and generating the alerts by default.
Hotel rate drop services were pioneered by the company Yapta. It's also part of the signature service of the TripAdvisor-owned online travel website Tingo, and DreamCheaper, based in Germany,
If rate drop services ever became part of a mainstream travel service, hotels would have to rethink their general pricing strategy. When a traveler books a reservation that’s refundable, he or she merely has to cancel the older reservation and rebook at the new lower rate.
If travelers rebooked more often, the revenue strategy might need to be adjusted to remain profitable.
The news of the Google test follows in the wake of Tnooz's reporting earlier this month on Google quietly adding instant booking for hotels in limited tests.
SOURCE: Search Engine Land