Google Search Introduces Hotel Carousel Display

[Jason Price]

Over the weekend Google launched a new method to display results for hotel searches. You will now find a carousel of hotel image thumbnails at the very top across the results page. Each thumbnail includes an image of the hotel, the Zagat rating, the number of reviews, the name of hotel and address, and a link that opens inside the results page to display the Google+ Local page for the hotel selected. Since I conducted a generic search “New York City Hotels” a selection of hotels appeared in the map that were listed in the thumbnails. These are the same results when I search in Google Maps. Why I got mostly midtown and downtown hotels may be based on my IP address. Since there is no dates calendar there is no opportunity to display rates and availability in each thumbnail. Maybe that will come next or some iteration of a Google Travel Center that represents the 5 stages of travel: Dreaming, Planning, Booking, Experiencing, and Sharing. Thanks, Jason Price