Google's travel assistant: Google Flights guarantees the lowest flight price or refunds the difference

“No one wants to regret their purchase, especially for large purchases like airline tickets where prices change day by day. If you see a flight marked Guaranteed price, this means we are confident that the price you see today will not go down. Now you can book with confidence that you won't miss out on a great bargain," he wrote in a blog post Richard Holden, Google's vice president of travel products.

Finding airline tickets is anything but a simple process, with help Google Flights but it will become much more pleasant. There's no one-size-fits-all recipe for finding the best airfares, so travelers will be thrilled with the new Google Flights feature that provides the lowest airfares on select flights.

If the price of the purchase tickets dropped by the summer, Google Assistant refunds you the difference, up to $500 per year.

“We want people to trust Google Flights to help them find great deals on airline tickets. We hope price guarantees will further strengthen that trust," Google Flights product manager Jade Kessler explained the company's decision.

Google Flights

For passengers who have found another one with a better price after the reserved tickets, this will certainly be welcome. The said help is currently in the pilot phase and is currently only available for the US market. It is therefore necessary to set the USA as the region, and US dollars as the currency.

Passengers must have their Google Account and a US address and phone number. Before payment, it will be necessary to tick the "Price guarantee" box, for which no additional payment is foreseen.

Even after purchase, Google will keep a close eye on the prices of your flight, and if it drops by more than $5, it will refund you the difference. The total allowable refund in each calendar year is US$500 per person for a maximum of three years. The money will be transferred to the Google Pay application within 48 hours after the departure of the plane, if passengers do not have access to the application, they can get it within 90 days after the flight.

"While our goal is to offer a price guarantee on as many routes and airlines as possible, it's currently only available to airlines that use Book on Google," Kessler says of the Google-hosted platform where information about payment.

The company had already started running a version of the pilot program in 2019, but the pandemic prevented further rollout: "In the long term, we want to expand this program to cover as many flights as possible, and we're exploring different options for how that would work."