9 ms·

Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

185 points by shekhar101 10y ago

rajathagasthya 10y ago
The trips feature in Inbox is incredibly useful, but I hated having to go back to the email app and scrolling till I find the trip details. So I'm glad they came up with a new app to manage your trips.
- sp332 10y ago
  I use the "pin" feature for all my travel information. It's not a complete fix, but it does cut down on the scrolling a lot!
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    One annoying issue I had is that even though Google Now properly identified my air travel ticket and even displayed a notification with my boarding pass QR code, the way Inbox bundles messages made it extremely hard to find that QR code. For some reason it decided to show me everything else but the contents of the actual e-mail. I'm generally happy about Inbox/Google Now features, but this one was a small annoyance in my trip this month.
    - stevesearer 10y ago
      I've had a few instances where Inbox was unable to automatically parse the email to extract the information making it somewhat useless in those cases. If there were also a way to manually enter information, that would be perfect (perhaps Google Travel does?).
      - shshhdhs 10y ago
        I guess the developers don't travel much and never get the feedback that it's broke
        technofiend 10y ago
        Time to make some devs fly around the world in 80 days dogfooding the app, with a few chaos injections throw in.
    - ddeck 10y ago
      >but this one was a small annoyance in my trip this month There are others. Unfortunately (for the airlines I use at least) there's no way for Google Now to know that a re-booked flight is not a new flight. I routinely need to change flight dates/times several times, but still get Google Now notifications for the original flights. I've had mild panic attacks on several occasions when I saw the "you need to have left for the airport two hours ago to get to your flight on time" popup.
      - tedmiston 10y ago
        I've had the exact same experience with re-booked flights. As you've alluded to, Google Now etc actually makes that experience more confusing.
- scotth 10y ago
  Did you know there's a "Trips" section in the navigation drawer? https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/6228360?hl=en https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/6228360?hl=en under the "Find your Trip in Inbox" header
  - rajathagasthya 10y ago
    Ah, yes. I feel dumb now. :) For some reason, opening the navigation drawer isn't my first thought.
Oletros 10y ago
Doesn't work with Google Apps accounts, fail
- vetinari 10y ago
  Features like these traditionally do not work with Google Apps accounts. Adding your hotel reservation confirmations to your calendar or notifying you of package delivery? Nope. Anything else Google Now could use? Nope. Google doesn't read you Apps account, like they do with the regular ones.
  - jakebasile 10y ago
    I would pay for an option to let them read it. I just want a regular schmuck's Google account with my own domain for email. Keep charging me $5/mo, get rid of the SLA, just let me use what I want to use.
    - userhacker 10y ago
      as a hack, you can use a regular gmail address and forward all your emails to that address. you can also respond from a regular gmail address to your abc@yourname.com by changing the from field (you have to verify you own the email address). currently using a similar setup, custom email address but responding from a regular gmail address
      - jakebasile 10y ago
        Yeah this workaround has existed for a while, but that means that your outbound mail will have "you@custom.com via you@gmail.com", or similar. If I recall correctly it also causes problems when responding from mail clients that aren't made by Google but I could be wrong there. It's a frustrating situation, but it's low on my list right now. I keep holding out hope that one day they'll make it right while warning people away from the same situation.
  - Oletros 10y ago
    Eh, a lot of those things work with Google App accounts like Hotel Reservations, Flights or Amazon purchases
Kikawala 10y ago
I've been using TripCase[1] and just gave this a try. It picked up my flight information, but not my hotel or GroundLink confirmation emails. All of those emails were in my gmail account. In the case of TripCase, I have to forward all of my confirmation/booking emails to trips@tripcase.com to add it to my trip on the app. [1] http://travel.tripcase.com/ http://travel.tripcase.com/
JOnAgain 10y ago
I've been using Tripit for years to keep track of my travel plans. Then I use TripAdvisor for figuring out what to do in places I"m visiting. Not seeing anything really interesting here, other than it being in one place. But judging by Google Reviews on maps which are significantly worse than Yelp reviews, I doubt their travel advice will be remotely close to TripAdvisors'.
- SEJeff 10y ago
  Tripadvisor is much better in Europe and yelp is better than Tripadvisor in the US in my limited experience.
  - prteja11 10y ago
    +1 this - I have been to London recently and Tripadvisor has much more reviews about restaurants/POI than Yelp.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    Foursquare is worth checking out (over Yelp or complementary to Yelp) in a lot of US cities too, definitely in SF and NYC.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  TripAdvisor is fine for touristy places and the major "must sees" in a lot of cities. Once you get into more specifics than that, I've found the combination of Foursquare + Yelp + Google Maps / Places way more helpful for specific queries. Also the constantly mixed in sponsored posts on TripAdvisor for tour booking companies are something that bothers me.
globile 10y ago
No Wifi, No Data, Taxi took you for a "ride", Goats in the street, Grumpy hotel manager, Flamenco music ...Yes!! This is definitely Barcelona, Spain!! ;-) C'mon Google!
huangc10 10y ago
Going to try this out, but like a commentator on the Verge already mentioned, they should really have released it or beta-tested earlier-mid year since a lot of people backpack / travel during the summer.
- huac 10y ago
  On the flip side, releasing it now is almost more like a soft launch, since the total travel volume is lower. They can fine tune the app before the bulk of users come on during the holidays or next summer.
- simonsarris 10y ago
  They did, privately. I've been Beta testing it since May 3rd.
- xeromal 10y ago
  They invited me to be part of the beta test at the beginning of summer. May 19th is when I received the email.
- ethanbond 10y ago
  Who cares about when they launch, I'm excited to find out when they shut it down! This winter? Spring? I doubt it'll make it to next travel season.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
gregoire 10y ago
I hope they'll make a desktop web version of this app, because planning everything (what you want to see, where you want to eat, etc.) on a small screen is tedious. For all my previous trips I have used Google My Maps [0], which is good but not great: on mobile, the places you added to your layers don't contain any Google Maps information, such as opening hours, and you even need to have data to get the name of a place you saved. However, what's great with My Maps compared to Trips, in addition to the fact that there is a desktop web app, is that thanks to layers you can color-code the places you add to your map, so for example make all the museums pins purple, the restaurants pins blue, etc. [0]: https://www.google.com/mymaps/ https://www.google.com/mymaps/
- fudged71 10y ago
  In Google Maps you can now add labels to places. And there is some support for emoji, which makes it almost as good as My Maps.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  Agree that Google custom maps on mobile could use some polish. I've been just starring places on Google Maps as a bucket list. This app seems to integrate with starred places.
- monksy 10y ago
  I'm not so sure about the saved locations.. I know they have them.. but I don't have a lot of experience with them. However, HERE Maps allows for you to do an offline download of the maps, and that includes building names, addresses, routing/driving, and train schedules (non-live).
- drtse4 10y ago
  Played a bit with it and it's not ready to replace My Maps at least for me. I don't care much about recommendations since I plan my trips beforehand and use My Maps to save the places I want to visit. Having something that could propose multiple itineraries between a subset of those places would be nice (with multiple options related to the method used to move between places). Trips seems more similar to a traditional guide than an app to assist travelers, you can't really build customized itineraries and even saving places is a bit cumbersome. Let's just hope they don't kill My Maps now.
joeyspn 10y ago
A "Travel app" that shows so many clichés condensed in its presentation video (and to top it all, a goat in a spanish street?) hints of enormous amounts of ignorance about the destination. And even feels insulting... I'll stick to my carrier with free voice and data roaming in UK-EU-US for reading TripAdvisor/Yelp reviews... and a normal GPS Navigator for moving around. Also, maybe Google has missed the minor detail that in 2020 Europe will provide free wifi and 4G in all european major urban areas, and free 5G in 2025 covering all the EU... [0] So yes, european visitors and local goats will have free connectivity in less than 4 years... Another GooglePlus-like project to the trash can, Google. [0] http://phys.org/news/2016-09-eu-aims-deploy-5g-technology.html http://phys.org/news/2016-09-eu-aims-deploy-5g-technology.ht... /rant
- wutbrodo 10y ago
  TL;DR: smugness usually works better when you actually have something relevant to say. Yeesh, this comment is almost embarrassing. Far be it from me to educate the "well-traveled", but I suppose I'll be the one to tell you that the world is larger than the US, EU and UK: I recently spent nine months traveling around 5 continents and less than one month of that was in any of those places. On top of that, the assertion that having data is a perfect replacement for an offline travel guide is a bizarre one. I (by choice) did all those countries without a data connection,cobbling together offline data similar to that offered by Trips that I needed whenever I found wifi. I'm not the only person I met on the road who preferred their trip to _not_ include full data access. While having a data plan is a reasonable choice as well, it's hardly a perfect replacement for the conscious choice to unplug as much as possible.
  - themihai 10y ago
    Most of the stand alone apps have offline capabilities, though(maps, mail, notes, messages etc). If you planned the trip chance is that you already have all the info available offline. Nevertheless I can see how this app may prove helful but I think it's far from a killer-app because it requires manual input anyway(i.e copy hotel(s) information from email)
  - joeyspn 10y ago
guard-of-terra 10y ago
Sounds totally like a promotional piece. Count "It's recommended that you check opening hours before visiting." That's how you do UX these days? Anyway, I'm pretty happy with skyscanner, maps.me, tripadvisor and booking (they have crappy UI tho, check alternatives in countries where they're viable).
- tedmiston 10y ago
  That seems like an allusion to seasonal hours and whatnot to me. AFAIK none of the travel POI apps account for aspects like that today. Aside: I got frustrated that none of them offer tracking brunch hours, so I made a one-page site for my city that has just that (http://www.qcbrunch.com http://www.qcbrunch.com). I'd like to do the same for kitchen hours at bars.
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    Doesn't make sense to repeat it multiple times out, and you definitely could crowd source that kind of info if the mapping wasn't usurped by opaque Google not interested in that.
  - skinnymuch 10y ago
    I like seeing local enthusiast pages like this. It would be nice to see a clear last updated date somewhere since most pages of this kind stop getting updated. I was able to see from the Github link that it is indeed being updated like your page says, but I'm not sure if everyone would understand the Github interface. Might just feel overwhelmed immediately? I could be wrong though! Thanks for reminding me that I'd like to do similar info for local areas around me.
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      Yeah, you're totally right, that's what I really want. Currently I just git push to GitHub Pages (without a local build process). I haven't figured out how to do get the deployment timestamp from that yet.
baby 10y ago
I'm using it right now, and it looks like I can't share the details of my next trip with my trip mates. This is kind of a deal breaker. Anyone has the same issue? I love the idea though, picking a 48 hours list from someone. I wanted to do a website like that years ago, called 48hoursInaCity.com or something, where you could upvote a 48hours tour of the city and choose the one you wanted. Okay, second issue: I can't add a reservation myself. For some reason I received my plane tickets email on a different email than gmail and... I can't have them in the app now :( Third issue: right now it just feels a bit gimmicky, I tried browsing places and it is nothing compared to Trip Advisor.
- Rebelgecko 10y ago
  If you forward yourself the email with your plane tickets, trips should pick them up. But it is a huge pain if your flight, hotel, and car reservations go to different emails. The app doesn't consolidate anything, even between Gmail accounts, and switching accounts requires a restart of the app
  - baby 10y ago
    Doesn't seem to work :/
- russelluresti 10y ago
  Yeah, I think the ability to share a trip with friends is required. I'm going on a trip later this year with a couple of friends and it would be nice if everyone had access to the information.
caio1982 10y ago
It's not a killer travel app at all, sorry. As of now I wouldn't trade having some Wikitravel pages offline for this Google Trips app. Let's wait and see before calling it a "killer travel app", shall we?
- tedmiston 10y ago
  Wikivoyage, Wikitravel, I can never remembered which is the most up-to-date. There are some offline apps for them on iOS (okay not great) but they've worked for me abroad a few times. The ones that come to mind are Turdus and Voyageur, both free.
  - mbrock 10y ago
    I have Wikivoyage's XML dump saved on my laptop. Recently I arrived in Berlin and realized I wasn't sure how to get to the city from this secondary airport in the best way, so I opened my computer and one easy incremental search in Emacs later and I knew just what to do...
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      Here's the link to the database dumps [0] if others are curious. They also mention some recommended apps. The Offline Expedition page also lists an apparently official app called Kiwix for iOS, Android, Mac, Linux, and Windows [1]. [0]: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Database_dump https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Database_dump [1]: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Offline_Expedition https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Offline_Expedition
wnevets 10y ago
I used it during a my trip to Ireland and it was fine, not great.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  Which part of the app are you referring to, or were you in the Local Guides early access by chance?
SonicSoul 10y ago
this solves only 1 part of the problem. at least based on the video, it seems like you'd need to have the hotel and places pre-selected. that's not how it usually works for me. I find having to plan a trip with all the restaurants/hotels/bars to visit beforehand incredibly painful so prefer to just choose the major cities/towns, and explore them after getting there. I also prefer the advice of locals vs tourists that visited and left reviews (because then you get stuck in most touristy places). This approach requires research in wifi zones and talking to locals. i think a better problem to solve would be actual suggestions that don't suck. perhaps crowd sourced from reputable users. and get all that pre-cached!
- tedmiston 10y ago
  The new Google Destinations web app is intended to solve the other half: pick your flights and hotel.
- binarysolo 10y ago
  I travel similarly to you and solve that by going there, watching people and traffic flow, wandering aimlessly, and having a data plan. (I recently moved cell service to Google Fi and love it.)
  - SonicSoul 10y ago
    some countries (like Japan) will also have a cheap wifi internet device you can rent. in Tokyo this was a few bucks a day
fudged71 10y ago
So far I am very impressed with their collection of places to see (groupings too!), and their ability to guess how long you might go to each location. The app isn't perfect, but these features alone are worth adding to the collection of travel apps for sure.
tmaly 10y ago
This really comes down to how good the data is. If they are parsing really ambiguous reviews to make a suggestion, the results will still be horrible.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  I have a hunch the recommendations are influenced by the Zagat acquisition a few years ago.
cheriot 10y ago
You can't have a travel guide without an editorial voice. There's a huge gap in travel for tooling, and this is a really good addition, but that's not enough by itself. Lonely Planet et al haven't changed meaningfully since the internet was invented, but compare the amount of time people spend looking at a travel guide vs anything with advertising on it. The Priceline Group spent over 5B in 2015 marketing while all of Lonely Planet is worth maybe 250M. Build the next generation guide and you'll capture the booking market with it. And Google will never compete with you for the same reason Facebook got smacked around when they used human news editors. It's crazy winner takes all. That's why it's a battle Google wants to fight: 72B: Priceline Group 15B: Expedia 7B: Trip Advisor 1B Orbitz 176M Travel Zoo
- orthoganol 10y ago
  I think if this were true TripAdvisor would already have won. In my global travels TA has easily been the best resource for mountains of decent reviews and meaningful "top lists" from people like me. It's not even close, IMO. (Although country/ city specific subreddits can be pretty good too). I also don't actually book through TA and see no need to. I just hop on Kayak, whose interface, filters, map, best prices, ease of booking is something I doubt TA could match.
  - avitzurel 10y ago
    This. This is why travel is an insanely hard business. I've been an engineer in the travel business for almost 6 years now and this is a behavior I see constantly (and I am not saying it's bad, don't get me wrong). Often people think that if you create just the right product you will win both the usage and the booking funnels but it's almost impossible to change the behavior of people and the psychology behind the booking. What you see is two completely separate funnels (with different users), one will use your product and one will come for 3 minutes, book and never come back again.
    - cheriot 10y ago
      > This is why travel is an insanely hard business. Ha, yes, it seems like there's always a travel start up failing.
kyletns 10y ago
While this app obviously has a few incredibly useful-looking features, am I the only one who feels travel is best done talking with locals? Asking your hotel manager for recommendations - THAT'S how to travel well. See a slice of pizza that looks good? Go ASK the guy where he got it. Do we really believe we can Google/Yelp our way to a genuinely local experience? Or do we think that local experiences start with local people? Is this just another app that helps us stare at our phones while traveling, instead of searching for real culture through real connection? That said, I already offline Google Maps before any trip, and this app will probably make it easier, so I'll use it. But I'll always place way more weight on a local recommendation than anything else.
- burkaman 10y ago
  I think part of the idea is that in many places, local people use Google too. So the app can combine your preferences with popular local spots, effectively getting recommendations from way more people than you could ask yourself. I have no idea if that's actually how it works though. But also, sometimes you don't really want a genuine local experience. Maybe you're in Washington DC for 2 days and want to squeeze in as much touristy stuff as possible. Locals aren't going to tell you about the great new exhibit at the National Gallery, they're going to tell you about their favorite dive bar on U street.
- sksksk 10y ago
  >While this app obviously has a few incredibly useful-looking features, am I the only one who feels travel is best done talking with locals? Asking your hotel manager for recommendations - THAT'S how to travel well That's kind of a pretentious statement to make. If one extreme is arriving in a city without plans, and the other extreme is meticulously planning every detail out. Then the way most people travel lies somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. As long you enjoy your trip, then you have found the right way to travel for you personally.
- pfranz 10y ago
  Locals are commonly a poor source of good information. I definitely wouldn't use them as an exclusive source. I make it a habit when going to the other side of town when running an errand to ask the teller where's a good place to grab lunch. More often than not they'll point to something like a Subway or KFC across the street. Their priorities are generally something quick and cheap. It's just too easy to live some place and not seek out the unique, locally available things. Many times when visiting other countries the people working there have never done the main thing people visit that area to do. Also tastes vary greatly. These apps offer an aggregate or editorial filter for something instead of a sample size of 1.
avitzurel 10y ago
Gogobot Senior Engineer here... This looks a little bit familiar http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/14/gogobot-ai-travel-planning/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/14/gogobot-ai-travel-planning... I've built this product here @ Gogobot and I am super proud of it. Not sure if I'm flattered or angry yet. :)
webrender 10y ago
Trello is an amazing tool for vacation planning. I like to have each column be a day in the itinerary, with cards for each event or mode of transportation. The app lets you download boards offline, so you can store relevant reservation info under each card.
ephimetheus 10y ago
It's completely broken for me as of now. Does not pick up any of my travel mails, I can't create a trip, and it does not show any places for cities that I manually enter...
lolcod 10y ago
Just another useless app limited to google+ users. Foursquare and TripAdvisor have much wider audience

185 points by shekhar101 10y ago

The trips feature in Inbox is incredibly useful, but I hated having to go back to the email app and scrolling till I find the trip details. So I'm glad they came up with a new app to manage your trips.

sp332 10y ago
I use the "pin" feature for all my travel information. It's not a complete fix, but it does cut down on the scrolling a lot!
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  One annoying issue I had is that even though Google Now properly identified my air travel ticket and even displayed a notification with my boarding pass QR code, the way Inbox bundles messages made it extremely hard to find that QR code. For some reason it decided to show me everything else but the contents of the actual e-mail. I'm generally happy about Inbox/Google Now features, but this one was a small annoyance in my trip this month.
  - stevesearer 10y ago
    I've had a few instances where Inbox was unable to automatically parse the email to extract the information making it somewhat useless in those cases. If there were also a way to manually enter information, that would be perfect (perhaps Google Travel does?).
    - shshhdhs 10y ago
      I guess the developers don't travel much and never get the feedback that it's broke
      - technofiend 10y ago
        Time to make some devs fly around the world in 80 days dogfooding the app, with a few chaos injections throw in.
  - ddeck 10y ago
    >but this one was a small annoyance in my trip this month There are others. Unfortunately (for the airlines I use at least) there's no way for Google Now to know that a re-booked flight is not a new flight. I routinely need to change flight dates/times several times, but still get Google Now notifications for the original flights. I've had mild panic attacks on several occasions when I saw the "you need to have left for the airport two hours ago to get to your flight on time" popup.
    - tedmiston 10y ago
      I've had the exact same experience with re-booked flights. As you've alluded to, Google Now etc actually makes that experience more confusing.
scotth 10y ago
Did you know there's a "Trips" section in the navigation drawer? https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/6228360?hl=en https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/6228360?hl=en under the "Find your Trip in Inbox" header
- rajathagasthya 10y ago
  Ah, yes. I feel dumb now. :) For some reason, opening the navigation drawer isn't my first thought.

Oletros 10y ago

Doesn't work with Google Apps accounts, fail

vetinari 10y ago
Features like these traditionally do not work with Google Apps accounts. Adding your hotel reservation confirmations to your calendar or notifying you of package delivery? Nope. Anything else Google Now could use? Nope. Google doesn't read you Apps account, like they do with the regular ones.
- jakebasile 10y ago
  I would pay for an option to let them read it. I just want a regular schmuck's Google account with my own domain for email. Keep charging me $5/mo, get rid of the SLA, just let me use what I want to use.
  - userhacker 10y ago
    as a hack, you can use a regular gmail address and forward all your emails to that address. you can also respond from a regular gmail address to your abc@yourname.com by changing the from field (you have to verify you own the email address). currently using a similar setup, custom email address but responding from a regular gmail address
    - jakebasile 10y ago
      Yeah this workaround has existed for a while, but that means that your outbound mail will have "you@custom.com via you@gmail.com", or similar. If I recall correctly it also causes problems when responding from mail clients that aren't made by Google but I could be wrong there. It's a frustrating situation, but it's low on my list right now. I keep holding out hope that one day they'll make it right while warning people away from the same situation.
- Oletros 10y ago
  Eh, a lot of those things work with Google App accounts like Hotel Reservations, Flights or Amazon purchases

Kikawala 10y ago

I've been using TripCase[1] and just gave this a try. It picked up my flight information, but not my hotel or GroundLink confirmation emails. All of those emails were in my gmail account. In the case of TripCase, I have to forward all of my confirmation/booking emails to trips@tripcase.com to add it to my trip on the app. [1] http://travel.tripcase.com/ http://travel.tripcase.com/

JOnAgain 10y ago

I've been using Tripit for years to keep track of my travel plans. Then I use TripAdvisor for figuring out what to do in places I"m visiting. Not seeing anything really interesting here, other than it being in one place. But judging by Google Reviews on maps which are significantly worse than Yelp reviews, I doubt their travel advice will be remotely close to TripAdvisors'.

SEJeff 10y ago
Tripadvisor is much better in Europe and yelp is better than Tripadvisor in the US in my limited experience.
- prteja11 10y ago
  +1 this - I have been to London recently and Tripadvisor has much more reviews about restaurants/POI than Yelp.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  Foursquare is worth checking out (over Yelp or complementary to Yelp) in a lot of US cities too, definitely in SF and NYC.
tedmiston 10y ago
TripAdvisor is fine for touristy places and the major "must sees" in a lot of cities. Once you get into more specifics than that, I've found the combination of Foursquare + Yelp + Google Maps / Places way more helpful for specific queries. Also the constantly mixed in sponsored posts on TripAdvisor for tour booking companies are something that bothers me.

globile 10y ago

No Wifi, No Data, Taxi took you for a "ride", Goats in the street, Grumpy hotel manager, Flamenco music ...Yes!! This is definitely Barcelona, Spain!! ;-) C'mon Google!

huangc10 10y ago

Going to try this out, but like a commentator on the Verge already mentioned, they should really have released it or beta-tested earlier-mid year since a lot of people backpack / travel during the summer.

huac 10y ago
On the flip side, releasing it now is almost more like a soft launch, since the total travel volume is lower. They can fine tune the app before the bulk of users come on during the holidays or next summer.
simonsarris 10y ago
They did, privately. I've been Beta testing it since May 3rd.
xeromal 10y ago
They invited me to be part of the beta test at the beginning of summer. May 19th is when I received the email.
ethanbond 10y ago
Who cares about when they launch, I'm excited to find out when they shut it down! This winter? Spring? I doubt it'll make it to next travel season.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

gregoire 10y ago

I hope they'll make a desktop web version of this app, because planning everything (what you want to see, where you want to eat, etc.) on a small screen is tedious. For all my previous trips I have used Google My Maps [0], which is good but not great: on mobile, the places you added to your layers don't contain any Google Maps information, such as opening hours, and you even need to have data to get the name of a place you saved. However, what's great with My Maps compared to Trips, in addition to the fact that there is a desktop web app, is that thanks to layers you can color-code the places you add to your map, so for example make all the museums pins purple, the restaurants pins blue, etc. [0]: https://www.google.com/mymaps/ https://www.google.com/mymaps/

fudged71 10y ago
In Google Maps you can now add labels to places. And there is some support for emoji, which makes it almost as good as My Maps.
tedmiston 10y ago
Agree that Google custom maps on mobile could use some polish. I've been just starring places on Google Maps as a bucket list. This app seems to integrate with starred places.
monksy 10y ago
I'm not so sure about the saved locations.. I know they have them.. but I don't have a lot of experience with them. However, HERE Maps allows for you to do an offline download of the maps, and that includes building names, addresses, routing/driving, and train schedules (non-live).
drtse4 10y ago
Played a bit with it and it's not ready to replace My Maps at least for me. I don't care much about recommendations since I plan my trips beforehand and use My Maps to save the places I want to visit. Having something that could propose multiple itineraries between a subset of those places would be nice (with multiple options related to the method used to move between places). Trips seems more similar to a traditional guide than an app to assist travelers, you can't really build customized itineraries and even saving places is a bit cumbersome. Let's just hope they don't kill My Maps now.

joeyspn 10y ago

A "Travel app" that shows so many clichés condensed in its presentation video (and to top it all, a goat in a spanish street?) hints of enormous amounts of ignorance about the destination. And even feels insulting... I'll stick to my carrier with free voice and data roaming in UK-EU-US for reading TripAdvisor/Yelp reviews... and a normal GPS Navigator for moving around. Also, maybe Google has missed the minor detail that in 2020 Europe will provide free wifi and 4G in all european major urban areas, and free 5G in 2025 covering all the EU... [0] So yes, european visitors and local goats will have free connectivity in less than 4 years... Another GooglePlus-like project to the trash can, Google. [0] http://phys.org/news/2016-09-eu-aims-deploy-5g-technology.html http://phys.org/news/2016-09-eu-aims-deploy-5g-technology.ht... /rant

wutbrodo 10y ago
TL;DR: smugness usually works better when you actually have something relevant to say. Yeesh, this comment is almost embarrassing. Far be it from me to educate the "well-traveled", but I suppose I'll be the one to tell you that the world is larger than the US, EU and UK: I recently spent nine months traveling around 5 continents and less than one month of that was in any of those places. On top of that, the assertion that having data is a perfect replacement for an offline travel guide is a bizarre one. I (by choice) did all those countries without a data connection,cobbling together offline data similar to that offered by Trips that I needed whenever I found wifi. I'm not the only person I met on the road who preferred their trip to _not_ include full data access. While having a data plan is a reasonable choice as well, it's hardly a perfect replacement for the conscious choice to unplug as much as possible.
- themihai 10y ago
  Most of the stand alone apps have offline capabilities, though(maps, mail, notes, messages etc). If you planned the trip chance is that you already have all the info available offline. Nevertheless I can see how this app may prove helful but I think it's far from a killer-app because it requires manual input anyway(i.e copy hotel(s) information from email)
- joeyspn 10y ago

guard-of-terra 10y ago

Sounds totally like a promotional piece. Count "It's recommended that you check opening hours before visiting." That's how you do UX these days? Anyway, I'm pretty happy with skyscanner, maps.me, tripadvisor and booking (they have crappy UI tho, check alternatives in countries where they're viable).

tedmiston 10y ago
That seems like an allusion to seasonal hours and whatnot to me. AFAIK none of the travel POI apps account for aspects like that today. Aside: I got frustrated that none of them offer tracking brunch hours, so I made a one-page site for my city that has just that (http://www.qcbrunch.com http://www.qcbrunch.com). I'd like to do the same for kitchen hours at bars.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  Doesn't make sense to repeat it multiple times out, and you definitely could crowd source that kind of info if the mapping wasn't usurped by opaque Google not interested in that.
- skinnymuch 10y ago
  I like seeing local enthusiast pages like this. It would be nice to see a clear last updated date somewhere since most pages of this kind stop getting updated. I was able to see from the Github link that it is indeed being updated like your page says, but I'm not sure if everyone would understand the Github interface. Might just feel overwhelmed immediately? I could be wrong though! Thanks for reminding me that I'd like to do similar info for local areas around me.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    Yeah, you're totally right, that's what I really want. Currently I just git push to GitHub Pages (without a local build process). I haven't figured out how to do get the deployment timestamp from that yet.

baby 10y ago

I'm using it right now, and it looks like I can't share the details of my next trip with my trip mates. This is kind of a deal breaker. Anyone has the same issue? I love the idea though, picking a 48 hours list from someone. I wanted to do a website like that years ago, called 48hoursInaCity.com or something, where you could upvote a 48hours tour of the city and choose the one you wanted. Okay, second issue: I can't add a reservation myself. For some reason I received my plane tickets email on a different email than gmail and... I can't have them in the app now :( Third issue: right now it just feels a bit gimmicky, I tried browsing places and it is nothing compared to Trip Advisor.

Rebelgecko 10y ago
If you forward yourself the email with your plane tickets, trips should pick them up. But it is a huge pain if your flight, hotel, and car reservations go to different emails. The app doesn't consolidate anything, even between Gmail accounts, and switching accounts requires a restart of the app
- baby 10y ago
  Doesn't seem to work :/
russelluresti 10y ago
Yeah, I think the ability to share a trip with friends is required. I'm going on a trip later this year with a couple of friends and it would be nice if everyone had access to the information.

caio1982 10y ago

It's not a killer travel app at all, sorry. As of now I wouldn't trade having some Wikitravel pages offline for this Google Trips app. Let's wait and see before calling it a "killer travel app", shall we?

tedmiston 10y ago
Wikivoyage, Wikitravel, I can never remembered which is the most up-to-date. There are some offline apps for them on iOS (okay not great) but they've worked for me abroad a few times. The ones that come to mind are Turdus and Voyageur, both free.
- mbrock 10y ago
  I have Wikivoyage's XML dump saved on my laptop. Recently I arrived in Berlin and realized I wasn't sure how to get to the city from this secondary airport in the best way, so I opened my computer and one easy incremental search in Emacs later and I knew just what to do...
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    Here's the link to the database dumps [0] if others are curious. They also mention some recommended apps. The Offline Expedition page also lists an apparently official app called Kiwix for iOS, Android, Mac, Linux, and Windows [1]. [0]: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Database_dump https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Database_dump [1]: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Offline_Expedition https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Offline_Expedition

wnevets 10y ago

I used it during a my trip to Ireland and it was fine, not great.

tedmiston 10y ago
Which part of the app are you referring to, or were you in the Local Guides early access by chance?

SonicSoul 10y ago

this solves only 1 part of the problem. at least based on the video, it seems like you'd need to have the hotel and places pre-selected. that's not how it usually works for me. I find having to plan a trip with all the restaurants/hotels/bars to visit beforehand incredibly painful so prefer to just choose the major cities/towns, and explore them after getting there. I also prefer the advice of locals vs tourists that visited and left reviews (because then you get stuck in most touristy places). This approach requires research in wifi zones and talking to locals. i think a better problem to solve would be actual suggestions that don't suck. perhaps crowd sourced from reputable users. and get all that pre-cached!

tedmiston 10y ago
The new Google Destinations web app is intended to solve the other half: pick your flights and hotel.
binarysolo 10y ago
I travel similarly to you and solve that by going there, watching people and traffic flow, wandering aimlessly, and having a data plan. (I recently moved cell service to Google Fi and love it.)
- SonicSoul 10y ago
  some countries (like Japan) will also have a cheap wifi internet device you can rent. in Tokyo this was a few bucks a day

fudged71 10y ago

So far I am very impressed with their collection of places to see (groupings too!), and their ability to guess how long you might go to each location. The app isn't perfect, but these features alone are worth adding to the collection of travel apps for sure.

tmaly 10y ago

This really comes down to how good the data is. If they are parsing really ambiguous reviews to make a suggestion, the results will still be horrible.

tedmiston 10y ago
I have a hunch the recommendations are influenced by the Zagat acquisition a few years ago.

cheriot 10y ago

You can't have a travel guide without an editorial voice. There's a huge gap in travel for tooling, and this is a really good addition, but that's not enough by itself. Lonely Planet et al haven't changed meaningfully since the internet was invented, but compare the amount of time people spend looking at a travel guide vs anything with advertising on it. The Priceline Group spent over 5B in 2015 marketing while all of Lonely Planet is worth maybe 250M. Build the next generation guide and you'll capture the booking market with it. And Google will never compete with you for the same reason Facebook got smacked around when they used human news editors. It's crazy winner takes all. That's why it's a battle Google wants to fight: 72B: Priceline Group 15B: Expedia 7B: Trip Advisor 1B Orbitz 176M Travel Zoo

orthoganol 10y ago
I think if this were true TripAdvisor would already have won. In my global travels TA has easily been the best resource for mountains of decent reviews and meaningful "top lists" from people like me. It's not even close, IMO. (Although country/ city specific subreddits can be pretty good too). I also don't actually book through TA and see no need to. I just hop on Kayak, whose interface, filters, map, best prices, ease of booking is something I doubt TA could match.
- avitzurel 10y ago
  This. This is why travel is an insanely hard business. I've been an engineer in the travel business for almost 6 years now and this is a behavior I see constantly (and I am not saying it's bad, don't get me wrong). Often people think that if you create just the right product you will win both the usage and the booking funnels but it's almost impossible to change the behavior of people and the psychology behind the booking. What you see is two completely separate funnels (with different users), one will use your product and one will come for 3 minutes, book and never come back again.
  - cheriot 10y ago
    > This is why travel is an insanely hard business. Ha, yes, it seems like there's always a travel start up failing.

kyletns 10y ago

While this app obviously has a few incredibly useful-looking features, am I the only one who feels travel is best done talking with locals? Asking your hotel manager for recommendations - THAT'S how to travel well. See a slice of pizza that looks good? Go ASK the guy where he got it. Do we really believe we can Google/Yelp our way to a genuinely local experience? Or do we think that local experiences start with local people? Is this just another app that helps us stare at our phones while traveling, instead of searching for real culture through real connection? That said, I already offline Google Maps before any trip, and this app will probably make it easier, so I'll use it. But I'll always place way more weight on a local recommendation than anything else.

burkaman 10y ago
I think part of the idea is that in many places, local people use Google too. So the app can combine your preferences with popular local spots, effectively getting recommendations from way more people than you could ask yourself. I have no idea if that's actually how it works though. But also, sometimes you don't really want a genuine local experience. Maybe you're in Washington DC for 2 days and want to squeeze in as much touristy stuff as possible. Locals aren't going to tell you about the great new exhibit at the National Gallery, they're going to tell you about their favorite dive bar on U street.
sksksk 10y ago
>While this app obviously has a few incredibly useful-looking features, am I the only one who feels travel is best done talking with locals? Asking your hotel manager for recommendations - THAT'S how to travel well That's kind of a pretentious statement to make. If one extreme is arriving in a city without plans, and the other extreme is meticulously planning every detail out. Then the way most people travel lies somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. As long you enjoy your trip, then you have found the right way to travel for you personally.
pfranz 10y ago
Locals are commonly a poor source of good information. I definitely wouldn't use them as an exclusive source. I make it a habit when going to the other side of town when running an errand to ask the teller where's a good place to grab lunch. More often than not they'll point to something like a Subway or KFC across the street. Their priorities are generally something quick and cheap. It's just too easy to live some place and not seek out the unique, locally available things. Many times when visiting other countries the people working there have never done the main thing people visit that area to do. Also tastes vary greatly. These apps offer an aggregate or editorial filter for something instead of a sample size of 1.

avitzurel 10y ago

Gogobot Senior Engineer here... This looks a little bit familiar http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/14/gogobot-ai-travel-planning/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/14/gogobot-ai-travel-planning... I've built this product here @ Gogobot and I am super proud of it. Not sure if I'm flattered or angry yet. :)

webrender 10y ago

Trello is an amazing tool for vacation planning. I like to have each column be a day in the itinerary, with cards for each event or mode of transportation. The app lets you download boards offline, so you can store relevant reservation info under each card.

ephimetheus 10y ago

It's completely broken for me as of now. Does not pick up any of my travel mails, I can't create a trip, and it does not show any places for cities that I manually enter...

lolcod 10y ago

Just another useless app limited to google+ users. Foursquare and TripAdvisor have much wider audience