When it comes to AI, no company has been more aggressive in the past year than Google. The tech giant has stuffed artificial intelligence in every product it has. And while I've tried most of these tools, one has slipped by.
A few months ago, Google unveiled Flight Deals. Currently in beta testing stage, Google is letting users test out this tool for themselves.
Its premise is simple. Using generative AI, you can use prompts to search for incredibly specific flights. Select the airport that you want to fly from, enter your prompt and select some filters, and in a matter of seconds, Google will show all of the flights that fit your needs.
This gets broken down into every location that fits your requirements, showing the optimal period, flight and price for what you searched, even showing (when possible) how much cheaper that flight is than average.
As someone who loves a bargain, this sort of tool is perfect for me. I’m happy to let the world choose my dates, and even my locations, in the sake of a good deal. But how well does it actually work?
Google’s Flight deals in practice
There are effectively two ways to use Google's Flight Deals. Because you can type the exact thing you’re looking for, you can either go incredibly specific or the other direction, giving vague clues to the AI tool.
I tried the specific side first. I told the Flight Deals to look for flights from London, then gave the prompt “Find the cheapest flight possible to Bilbao in January." In just a couple of seconds, it had tracked down a cheap flight to Bilbao, 25% less than average according to the flight tracker, and had selected a week in January.
From here, you can click through and see this particular flight, as well as all of the others for those selected dates. Simple really. But what about something a bit more complicated?
My next prompt was: “Flight to a city that will be warm in February. It should be a city with an arts and food culture." I then also added the filter that it should be a business flight and that I only wanted to fly with British Airways.
Even if you enter a location that doesn’t have an airport, Google will locate the nearest airport and show flights from there.
This prompt returned 14 flights, all of which went to countries that would be warm in February, and all of which also have big food cultures. The options were all in January and were business class flights with British Airways.
So far, these have all been from London, a city that flies all around the world, but what happens if you choose somewhere smaller? I tried Newquay airport (one of the smaller airports in England).
Using the same prompt, this returned just one flight - going to Lisbon. However, it was still in February, on a business class flight with British Airways.
Even if you enter a location that doesn’t have an airport, Google will locate the nearest airport and show flights from there.
Is this the future of booking flights?
In the grand scheme of new AI features, Google Flight Deals isn't revolutionary. However, it does offer a unique new way to book flights. By utilizing the power of generative AI, Flight Deals makes the entire process so much quicker, especially if you’re not actually sure where you want to go yet.
One of the major benefits with this kind of tool is that it takes a lot of the work out of the process. If you know you want to go get some sun in February but don’t care where, it can sort that. Or, if you would love to go to Tokyo but need to keep prices down, it can find the most affordable options.
Overall, even in its beta stage Flight Deals is a very useful tool for researching and booking travel.
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