A new way to Google hotels: Hotel Finder

Some people waste time on the Internet by window shopping online, reading blogs or browsing Facebook. I plan trips.So news of Googles new experimental Hotel Finder announced onits official blog todayis very welcome.

The first thing youll notice about Hotel Finder is the look. Most travel search sites share pretty much the same layout: Theyre overwhelmed with search boxes, radio dials, and drop-down menus galore, and of course, ads. Lots of them. In that way, Hotel Finder has a refreshing approach: Its clean, uncluttered, and not a single ad to be found. (For now at leastthis is Google were talking about.)

Youve got two good options for how you want to search. You can search and get results in list form, which can then be sorted by hotel class, user ratings, average price per night, and how far above or below the current price is compared to the average price the rest of year. From there you can make a short list of favorites you want to compare or review later.

Perhaps even niftier is the map view. Youre given a free-form parallelogram that you can structure around areas you know you may want to stay infor instance in San Francisco you may want to search within Nob Hill, Union Square, and North Beach, but want to avoid the Tenderloin and Financial District. You can isolate hotels within that parallelogram and ! then com pare lodging at just those places. Theres also a heat map of sorts that highlights the popular tourist areas in case youre visiting a city youre not familiar with.

Hotel Finder also pops up information about each hotel you select within the browser window, rather than detonating a small explosion of new tabs and windows like pretty much every other travel site. Only when you go to book (a drop-down tab will give you the options of where to get the best rate) will you be sent off to a different site to complete the transaction.

Hotel Finder is available for hotels in the U.S. only for now, the company blog says, but seems to imply that it could expand beyond our borders should the experiment go well.

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