Learn what Google’s latest acquisition will mean for the travel industry, as explained by Licensed Timeshare Professionals.

In the efforts of changing the way their users shop for airline tickets, Google has recently been allowed to acquire ITA Software, a company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts  for $700 million dollars. The software powers many popular airfare tracking sites such as Kayak, Trip Advisor and even cheapflights.com. Google does not have plans of selling airline tickets nor do they compete in this arena currently, so there should be many positive benefits to the acquisition and few negative effects.

Better Flight Search Means More Sales

Google intends to make our airfare shopping much easier by working hand in hand with the newly acquired company to drive more traffic to airline websites, which in turn will result in more sales for the industry.  As always, Google wants to be the “go-to-guy” for your vacation’s biggest hurdles, and by having one well-integrated portal for comparing prices and other flight attributes, they intend to capitalize on the 49% of travellers that choose to purchase their tickets online.

When Will We See the New Service Launch?

Due to the fact that the deal has just been approved earlier this year, it may take quite a bit of time to have the service functional for Google’s users. Hopefully by late 2012, we will see some new widget or featured section pop up on Google’s search results. At this stage, no one really knows how it will be implemented or what it will mean for the many Ad words clients that Google has in the airline industry.

What Does This Mean For Travel?

Travel-related search is among the highest-volume queries Google received. Finding the cheapest flights will be easier than ever. Since Google doesn’t intend to sell tickets, the traffic for these searches will be quickly referred to the airlines, which in turn reaps the end benefits. What Google is after is, as always, is mind-share and ad revenue. So in short, you may not see huge waves rippling out from this acquisition, but you may just be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to find the flights you are looking for.