Google has announced that some flights will be offering a best price guarantee and if the flight drops in price they will refund the difference. Google tested this feature back in 2019, so it’s nice to see it finally launch. There are some restrictions though:
- Flight must be labelled as ‘price guarantee’ to be eligible (see badge below)
- Price must decrease by at least $5
- Maximum refund is $500
- Limit of 3 price guarantee bookings at any one time
- Flight must depart from the US, must use a US billing address, US phone number, country/region must be set to USD and price set to USD
It’ll be interesting to see how many flights actually have this price guarantee and if it’s only available on flights with departures in the near future. This feature would be enough to change my booking behavior.
i was using skyscanner a lot now I will move to google flights
I’ve seen a bunch of these on Alaska Airlines flights recently but usually only for the cheapest fare which doesn’t have seat selection.
Really nice feature to offer though I really try not to spend money on flights. Maybe I do if I have a gift card or if it’s a short distance, but in those cases I try hard to swing flat points currencies, like jetblue or SW, for the flexibility.
For now, Alaska, Hawaiian and Spirit Airlines are the main Book on Google partners, so they are likely to have the most price-guaranteed itineraries during the pilot phase, but Google representatives said they’re hoping to expand the program to more carriers soon.
The old alaska price guarantee
Interesting! The flights I’m after right now aren’t offering this but something to keep an eye out for!
Wonder if this will turn out to be a good way to know when to book even if not booking via google? Gotta assume they’re only offering it on flights their algos say are selling at the lowest end of their normal price range.
Not too familiar with Google Flights process – is it like Expedia, where you’re booking through a third-party operator and aren’t eligible for status upgrades, points, etc. on the airline? Or is it just an aggregator like SkyScanner that redirects you to the airline’s site or app to checkout?
It’s the latter
It actually depends! It either redirects to the airline’s site (Delta, American, etc.) or allows you to book through their own platform (Alaska that I know of, so far!)
Depends on the airline.
Since when do you not get airline miles when booking through Expedia?
Flights with best price guarantee are the routes that regulators should look at to see if there is enough competition. What Google is saying is according to their data in that month the flight for that route (likely) does not go below the price they guarantee. Is the because of inadequate competition?
Even when there’s much competition, there will be a price that is within $5 of the cheapest one. If anyone’s, Google’s machine learning can predict this with pretty good certainty.
Not like they are the first, Capital One has a similar feature.
Even if they found something, what could regulators do? They can’t force airlines to fly a route with low competition.
They had this feature for Alaska Airlines flight that I booked
Does anyone know what the transaction name is/codes as? Is it the airlines or will Google be in the transaction name?
Appeared as airfare through Airline when I booked it through Google last month