Technology giant Google launched on Monday Google Trips new app, which helps world travelers feel more comfortable with their flight itineraries and places to visit abroad. ‘Trips’ is the company’s new application and is available for iOs and Android users.
On Monday Google informed the world about Trips, a new free app that doesn’t work on Wifi or mobile data, so users don’t have to worry about international phone plans. The app works by linking hotel and flight data from the customer’s main Google account, linking all of the information into one place and creating a Google map of the desired places to visit while abroad.
“You might get recommendations from friends, professional travel guides or online reviews but figuring out how to squeeze everything you want to do into a finite window of time can be stressful,” said Stefan Frank, product manager for Google Trips in a written statement.
A personal and international guide
The company is treating the new app as a personal guide that plans out events for the day, places to eat and locations to see based on Google searches and personal tastes administered in the app.
As Google puts it in their promotional video, the main objective of the app is to be the traveler’s companion from the beginning to the end of their experience abroad. Managing flight schedules, hotel, and car reservations and even looking for activities depending on the weather.
The app has 200 cities on its data so far, works offline and includes city maps and directions in a “google map style” so users can choose their transport of choice. Richard Holden, Google’s vice president of product management, said this is the result of two years of the company’s travel products.
Users have the option to research fun facts or information about the country’s currency, airport schedules and others by tapping the “Need to know” button on the app. Trips also offer the “Things to do” option that gives the user an extensive list of activities to do in the city.
The app adapts itself to the user and the time they are traveling since they have the option to modify it to their taste, offering shopping guides, museums, art galleries and other options.
Trips divide locations into top sightings places depending on the traveler’s location, and tastes and works actively trough the day. If the user has an active cellular plan, the app can even inform if a business or place is closed for the day.
The company is hoping that the application works on the travel market since it could be a great opportunity for travel advertising.
“If this were to take off, and millions of people have the app installed on their phone, that creates a huge audience for Google to get data from,” said Greg Sterling, Google’s vice president of strategy to USA Today.
However this is not the first nor last application involving traveler’s choices and organizing information, there’s a lot of similar apps that perform similar tasks. But according to The Verge’s journalist Casey Newton, Trips is a friendly app that might come in hand when needed.
Source: The Verge