Come for the storage, stay for the $100’s in hotel savings…
Google is doing things. After shaking up the mobile phone and cell phone plan game, with Project Fi, they dropped Google Flights – easily the best tool for finding great deals. Then, they improved Google Maps and Google Trips. Noticing a theme? Now, perhaps in an effort to officially get in the travel door before Amazon, Google is affixing its sights even more firmly on travel, with the introduction of a new subscription service, which not only helps you store all your files on the web, but also lands extreme hotel savings and media perks, which you quite literally won’t find anywhere else. Here’s the story…
Google One is Google’s new cloud based storage solution, which is basically the new Google Drive. If you weren’t already familiar, the service allows you to store any files, from movies to documents in the cloud, and access them from any device. It’s a great service, and at $1.99 a month for 100GB of storage, it’s a great product in itself. But to separate Google One from other cloud based solutions, Google is including exclusive hotel discounts, Google Play (movies and tv) store discounts and other perks. So far, the results are incredibly compelling.
Early reports are of legitimate savings. Not the shit offers you see from most online travel sites in your daily inbox skim, offering 75% off. These are deals which after comparison searching directly with the hotels, and on other sites, are only available to Google One subscribers. Right now we see it like this: pay for the service because the service is good, and if it happens to save you $100s on your next hotel, thank the Google Gods for building something beyond genius.
You’ll be able to search hotels directly from Google, just using the standard search while logged into your Google One account. If you’re looking for a specific hotel, type it in, enter dates and you’ll see rates. If there’s a “One” logo next to the rate, you can be assured it’s a special rate, just for people like you. You can also use searches like “hotels near me” or “hotels in Bangkok” to bring up a wide list of options. The discounts are said to vary between 15-45% off depending on the particulars, but as we always say – any percent is better than no percent. Happy hunting. You can join Google One here.
Featured image courtesy of the St. Regis Langkawi.
Are these prepaid rates?
If only Google wasn’t so evil. The latest with them tracking you even when you turn off the location feature on your phone as one example. The fact that they keep your information forever is also less than endearing.
says google 1 coming soon. only able to subscribe to updates
I’ve been on Google One for several months now. It’s been great since my family uses Google for just about everything (email, photos, etc). It was a nice surprise last week when Google sent me an email saying “Thanks for being a Google One subscriber and to thank you for your loyalty we are giving you a FREE Google home Mini”. (Value $50). At first I thought it was spam but it was the real deal and 48 hours later my Google Home Mini was at my front porch. That was a nice surprise.
When you switch to the Google unlimited plan the Google 1 plan and the Unlimited plan doesn’t start until the start of your next billing cycle date. Not a big deal but just FYI for some.