Google's travel search now highlights travel advisories and airline cancellation policies

Google today announced a small but important addition to its travel search site on both mobile and desktop.

When you search for flights, hotels and activities, the site will now highlight active travel advisories for your destination. In addition, now that most airlines have changed their flight change and cancellation policies in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, Google has added to the flight results page a direct link to your airline's policies, too.

These are obviously minor changes, but sadly necessary ones. And while everybody is likely aware of the State Department's current Level 4 "Do Not Travel" advisory, at some point in the next few months, we'll get to a point where those advisories will change for some regions while they may still be in place for others.

As for the airlines, it's worth noting how much their response to the coronavirus pandemic is still in flux. A number of companies have now extended their cancellation policies to cover all flights booked for May, for example. And while most airlines are still operating at least a limited flight schedule for the time being, that could easily change in the coming weeks as the industry tries to grapple with the fallout of this crisis.

To keep up with the policy changes across airlines, Google also published a new document on its help center with links to all of these policies for most major airlines, too.