Thanks for your questions everyone. What you’re seeing is a new feature that shows price and availability for hotels. We’re currently working with a number of partners to allow users to click through and begin the booking process. In addition, we’re working to expand these partnerships and exploring ways to allow individual hoteliers to easily share updated pricing / availability. In the interim, you can already add direct booking links in Google Places (see help article ). Thanks for your excitement about participating; we’re looking forward to opening this up to more partners.
Cheers,
Brianna
From a small hotel’s point of view, this can happen none to soon. Often times the likes of Orbitz or Expedia can take 25% of their booking fees on a regular basis and upwards of 50% in a clearance situation. While the large hotel booking sites do not like the idea of “disintermediation”, the hotel chains and small hotels most definitely would.
At some point we can assume that Google is planning on making the Places Page a transactional environment for many industries. This is likely but the initial foray.
Related posts:
- Google Places Upgrade: Reviews with Sentiments & Hotel Booking Tool
- Google Places (LBC) Feature- Allows Discreet Links in Additional Detail Fields
- What is The Real Reason that TripAdvisor Is Limiting Review Content To Places?