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Google has tied up with travel portal Cleartrip to expand the reach of Google Flights in India, in what turns out to be the fourth such partnership by Google in the country after the launch of the application in 2015.
As per an Economic Times report, Google has been in such a partnership with Jet Airways, Vistara and travel portal Via.com already.
Google Flights is the sub-arm of the search giant which allows users to search for flights, compare prices and book them via the search engine on desktops, mobiles and tablets.
As per the report, head of air distribution at Cleartrip, Balu Ramachand had said that this would allow their flight prices to be accessible on the Google platform.
Now onwards, the Cleartrip flight inventory prices will be made available on the Google Flights search, added Ramachandran.
“For Google…this partnership with Cleartrip is important as it helps expand our offering and provides consumers with another way to conveniently plan and book their travel,” said Vikas Agnihotri, industry director, Google India.
Also Read: Here’s how to save money on flights using Google’s new Flight Insights
A top executive whose company has partnered with Google said: "One advantage with Google Flights is that it allows the listed supplier to retain ownership of the customer. This means the supplier charges insurance tariffs, etc. and, more importantly, retains intelligence and data such as travel and booking patterns of the customer. This doesn't happen in case of booking through an OTA (online travel agency)."
Interestingly, according to a report in Medianama, chief marketing officer Subramanyam Sharma had previously pointed that Google Flights will have limited success in India due to homogenous consumer pricing.
In addition to searching for carriers, Google Flights can be used to book hotels as well.
One of the unique features Google Flights is the open-ended flight searches through which the user may select the destination and the application calculates every price for every day in the year, and display it like a graph or a table.
Last year, Google added an alert feature where if a particular flight route is selected, then Google will notify the user in case of price changes.
In addition to that, Google Flights also provides a time-frame within which the booking can be done before the prices go up.
In case users are not looking at a particular route and have not yet selected a flight, Google also uses display cards to flash at users to help them make decisions.
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