One of the most useful features of Google’s flight shopping tool has always been the ability to estimate when booking a given trip will be most economical. Now, Google is leaning into that use case with a new feature that explicitly spells out when flights are expected to more affordable.
Google Flights already shows how the price for your flight compares to historical data — whether the rates available today for a given flight are cheaper, more expensive, or average compared to the norm. Starting this week, Flights will also show an AI-generated snippet (note the Bard icon in the animation below) that spells out when rates are typically least expensive for “searches with reliable trend data.”
This feature isn’t about finding dates for your trip that might be less expensive, but rather dealing with the fluctuations of ticket prices day to day. With this update, Google Flights should be able to tell you with a reasonable degree of accuracy whether it’d be less expensive to book now, or to wait until later — and it’ll even tell you when “later” will be, providing a date window where prices are likely to be lowest.
As Google points out, this feature will pair well with other Google Flights features, like price tracking and price guarantees — another recent addition to Google Flights that sees Google refund the amount you overpaid if the fare goes down after you book certain flights. Google says the new AI-powered pricing insights should start showing up this week.
