Google’s improved travel search tools are great for planning trips on a budget

Last year, when I went to Europe for a month, I spent a lot of time on sites like Hostel World before and during the trip, figuring out what places to stay at, how’s the area, and how much it’ll cost me. I really wish Google’s handy new travel features were around that time.

The search giant released a bunch of features today that’ll help you decide when to visit a particular place and easily find out what area suits your needs. The new ‘When to visit’ feature gives you a sense of when is the peak traveling season in a city, and how much you’ll have to shell out during that month.

For me, this is quite important as I mostly travel solo, and backpack my way through. So I’d want to visit a place when it’s not peak traveling season, and hotels are relatively cheap.

My personal favorite new feature is “Where to stay,” which suggests w which provides you with detailed information on what the area you’ll be visiting is famous for.  Personally, when I visit a new city, I like to stay in areas that are central or close to places of attraction. Plus, they should have a lot of cafes and bars around, and public transport should be at a reasonable walking distance. Google shows the best areas to stay in the city, and the average cost of a hotel there. Plus, you can easily filter hotels by these areas.

Google has also rolled out features such as personalized hotel recommendations and how much you’ll pay for the whole stay. You can check them out here.

While these features don’t quite replace Google’s brilliant and now-defunct Trips app, but it does give you a little bit more incentive to use its Google Maps-powered Trips web portal.