Google and British Airways have teamed up to produce what the pair claim is one of the airline industry’s first “mash-ups”. The tool on BA.com, which allows users to browse flight destinations on the search engine giant’s satellite imaging product, Google Earth, has been launched to coincide with the airline’s latest World Offers sale. Consumers…
BA.com promo to use Google Earth
Google and British Airways have teamed up to produce what the pair claim is one of the airline industry’s first “mash-ups”.
The tool on BA.com, which allows users to browse flight destinations on the search engine giant’s satellite imaging product, Google Earth, has been launched to coincide with the airline’s latest World Offers sale.
Consumers that download the Google Earth tool to the desktops will be able to view specially created BA.com “layers” to illustrate the location of hotels and destinations during the booking process.
The promotion kicked off on 31 August and is expected to run until the end of September.
Google head of consumer marketing, Obi Felton, said: “We hope holiday-makers have fun with this specially created tool.
“People have always enjoyed finding their own home on Google Earth and now they can see where they’ll be laying down their beach towel or enjoying après ski before they fly.”
BA head of brands and marketing communications, Jayne O’Brien, said the product would allow passengers to “familiarise themselves with the local area, hotels and amenities”.
“Be it families checking how near their Florida hotel is to Disney World, their Caribbean resort is to the beach or avid skiers comparing the topography of different pistes – there’s something for everyone,” she added.
The so-called mash-up is the latest in a string of collaborations between travel companies and Google.
TUI and The Adventure Company have recently created Google Earth patches to allow web users to browse holiday destinations.
Photo-sharing service Flickr this week launched a tool to allow members to assign a Yahoo! Maps location to images.
