(Cross-posted on the Google Maps blog)

Whether it’s touring the canals of Venice, swimming with the seals in the Galapagos or climbing the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, Street View has taken you to some of the most beautiful and exciting places around the world. Now, in addition to scoping out your destination, Street View can help you cut down the stress of traveling by giving you a preview of your journey, too. Our first efforts to map global transit locations include 16 international airports, over 50 train and subway stations, and even a cable car station in Hong Kong.

Here’s an interactive map so you can see the new Street View transit locations worldwide.

Now you can visit the check-in counter of your airline in Madrid, map out the way from baggage claim to the bus at Tokyo International Airport and check out where to pick up your rental car at Eindhoven Airport; you can even scope out your seat on an Emirates flight from Dubai! Or, if you’re planning to take the train, navigate through Waterloo station so you can be one step ahead, whether you’re with a group of friends, family or a baby stroller.

Check in at Madrid Barajas, ES

Arrivals, Tokyo International Airport, JP

Eindhoven Airport, NL

Emirates A380 at Dubai Airport

Waterloo Station, London, UK

Don’t let travel logistics get you down this holiday season. With Street View, you can see how to get where you’re going faster and easier. Enjoy and safe travels!

Posted by Ulf Spitzer, Google Street View Program Manager

When I'm planning a trip, I use Google Flight Search to find the option that's best for me. For those times when I'm not ready to book immediately, Flight Search now offers a "Saved Flights" feature that allows me to save useful flight information and retrieve it when I'm ready to book.

When I’m signed in to my Google account on my mobile phone or tablet, and find a flight option I'm interested in I click the star button to add it to my saved flights list.

I can then access my saved flights on any device at any time by clicking the star icon on the Flight Search home page.

Saved results reflect price changes that may have occurred since I added the flights to my list, giving me all the information I need to make a smart booking decision.

We hope this helps make your trip planning a little easier to manage.

Jirka Semecky, Software Engineer

When you need a hotel or when wanderlust strikes, why wait until you get back to your computer to start planning your next trip? Hotel Finder now makes it easier to find and book a hotel right from your phone.

Tip:  Good deals on hotels are highlighted in green.

On your phone, go to www.google.com/hotels and search for your destination. You can filter the search results by price, hotel class, user rating and distance. Select a hotel to learn more: photos, hotel amenities, reviews and its location on a map can all be conveniently accessed from the same page. You can also save hotels that appeal to you into a short list for easy comparison by pressing the star.

Once you find the perfect match, you can quickly book your hotel through any of our booking partners.

To save you more time, you can also complete the reservation with a few clicks using Google Wallet: Just look for the “Buy with Google” icon for a booking partner that allows you to easily and securely pay with Google Wallet. This will leave you more time to worry about what to pack.

If you don’t have a Google Wallet account, don’t worry. You only need to enter the payment details once when booking your first hotel. Google Wallet saves your information securely so you don’t need to re-enter it every time.

Hotel Finder is available on your smartphones and desktop in more than 100 countries. The Google Wallet booking feature is currently available in the U.S. for stays within the country, but we hope to expand more broadly soon. To learn more, please visit our help page .

Maciek Nowakowski, Product Manager

Google’s goal is to get users quickly to the information that best answers their travel-related queries. Today, we're excited to announce two new features in Flight Search that should make it easier than ever for people to find a great flight.

If you're a budget-conscious traveler with some flexibility in your schedule, a new feature called tips may be able to help you save money. We will show you alternative flight options, so you'll know if there's a less expensive flight a day earlier or later than the date you'd originally planned to travel, or a nearby airport that offers a non-stop to your destination. We'll even tell you if there are inexpensive upgrades to business class on your target travel dates.



Another new feature called best flights should help you save time by calling out flights that are most likely the best trade off between price and convenience.



You’ll see our suggestions -- the flights that most people choose -- highlighted at the top of the list. Of course, it’s still possible to see flights sorted in all the ways previously available -- price, airline, number of stops, duration, and more.

We hope these features will make it easier than ever for you to get away and explore the world. Enjoy!

Fred Brewin, Product Manager

In honor of National Travel & Tourism Week in the U.S., and just in time for summer travel planning, we thought we'd share some tips on finding the best airfares.

Let’s say you want to plan a long weekend somewhere in the U.S. that involves an easy flight (under two hours, nonstop) and costs less than $350. You can easily search for the best option by going to www.google.com/flights , where you can pick dates, set the sliders to your parameters and leave the destination blank. Live prices will appear on the map, so you can quickly see the destinations that fit your criteria.

Another option for flexible travelers is to check prices for different airports in your origin area. We always wanted to visit The Grand Ole Opry, and it could be especially fun during the Fourth of July weekend. Since we live in Chicago, it is easy to drive to several surrounding airports to save money. As shown below, I used the dropdown check list to search fares for flights departing from Rockford, Milwaukee, O’Hare, and Midway to anywhere. Instantly I was able to see that good flight options are still available for our dates to fly from O’Hare to Nashville for $246. (Sometimes, the closest airport does work best for you. But it’s worth trying the others.)

Whether you’re planning a trip on your desktop, tablet or phone, you can use Flight Search to search for countries, states, islands and even continents from any origin in the U.S., Canada, France, U.K., Italy, Spain or Netherlands.

Set your parameters and go explore the U.S.! It’s easier than you think.

Cara Kretz, Marketing Communications, Travel

Want to go on that dream vacation with your American Airlines’ AAdvantage miles but not sure where you can fly? Redeeming miles for flights just got easier now that American has launched the new Award Map, powered by our QPX™ Reward Shopping feature.

This new tool helps users quickly and easily search for and book award travel using their AAdvantage miles. Users simply search with criteria, such as destination category by region or interest, and the miles they wish to use, in addition to regular search parameters like their departure airport, dates of travel and cabin preferences. Behind the scenes the QPX Reward Shopping engine quickly computes a huge number of possibilities to present the user with all available award flight options within their desired mileage amount. Available destinations are then displayed on American’s intuitive Award Map, making it easy for travelers to evaluate all their options and book using their AAdvantage miles.

“We’ve had a long standing relationship with American Airlines, helping them innovate with pricing and shopping since 2004,” said Gianni Marostica, Commercial Director for Travel at Google. “We were thrilled to help them take this latest innovation from idea to implementation in a few short months. Congratulations to the team at American Airlines on this exciting and successful launch.”

Posted by Nate Nottke, Senior Technical Account Manager

If you live in the UK, France, Italy, Spain or the Netherlands -- and are thinking of hiking the Swiss Alps, visiting the Greek Isles, taking a bite out of the Big Apple in NYC or simply planning a business trip -- Flight Search is now available to make planning your trip easier.

Starting today, you can use Flight Search to quickly find, compare and book flights originating from each of these countries to any airport in the world. You'll also be able to search for flights from airports in these countries and see prices in your local currency. Additionally, you can conduct searches in 8 languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Basque, Catalan, Galician and Dutch -- and see prices in your local currency.

Smarter travel planning
Let’s say you’ve decided the Greek Isles are your vacation destination of choice, but you’re not sure which airport offers the most affordable fares. By typing ‘Greece’ as your destination, you’ll be able to quickly compare the cost of the different options, viewing live prices on the map.

Likewise, if you’re looking to take the family to New York City but are unsure of the best time to go, you can click on our ‘Lowest fares’ icon to see which dates will get you the lowest fare.

We choose the best flights based on cost and total travel time, while covering a variety of departure times and airlines. But, you can always view longer or more expensive flights by selecting, 'Show all'. Flight Search makes it easy for you to:

• Find flights quickly. As you make changes to dates, destinations and filters, results will load fast in a format that’s easy to scan. 
• Discover places to go on a map. Explore possible destinations and view live ticket prices by surfing the map. You can filter by price, airline or flight duration. 
• Figure out the best time to travel. Quickly see which travel dates are least expensive by dragging the date selector forward or backward, or click the "Lowest fares" icon to compare lots of dates at once. 
• See a simple list of the most relevant flights. Use our easy-to-scan list or compare options and find the flight that's most convenient, least expensive, wi-fi enabled or simply the one that best meets your needs. 

Sometimes we are not able to show results for every single airline and we will make that clear. We are working to expand our relationship with other airlines, and bring Flight Search to more countries and in more languages.

To access Flight Search in your local country or language, type:

• google.co.uk/flights/ 
• google.fr/flights/ 
• google.it/flights/ 
• google.es/flights/ 
• google.nl/flights/ 

We’ve worked to provide you with fast results as you browse a simple list of the most relevant flights, figure out when to travel, and get ideas about where to go and book your trip online. We hope you’ll enjoy planning your next trip with Flight Search! Bon Voyage!

Posted by Noam Ben Haim, Senior Product Manager, Travel