In 2020, Google made a significant change to its Google Shopping destination by making it free for e-commerce retailers to sell on Google, when before the Shopping tab had been dominated by paid product listings. It also made it free for partners to participate in Google Flights.
Today, the company announced it's now doing the same thing for hotel booking links on the Google.com/travel vertical.
Beginning this week, Google will make it free for hotels and travel companies around the world to appear in hotel booking links on Google.com/travel -- a change that will give users a more comprehensive look into hotel room availability as they research and plan their trips.
The company is positioning this change as a way it can better help meet consumers' needs, ahead of the expected return of travel as the pandemic comes to an end.
"When travel does resume in earnest, it’s crucial that people can find the information they’re looking for and easily connect with travel companies online," writes Richard Holden, VP of Product Management for Google's Travel efforts, in today's announcement.
In reality, the adoption of free listings is part of a larger effort underway at Google to shift many of its destinations that were previously powered by paid ads to become free listings. On the e-commerce front, this shift was meant to strategically counteract the growing threat from Amazon in e-commerce, which has steadily grown its ad business over the years. Amazon is also now often the first place users go to search for products, bypassing Google entirely -- a worrying threat to Google's core ad business.
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