Google’s new travel app can do what you previously needed four different apps to do. Whether you’re the type of traveller to spend your whole vacation on a beach, or you want hit every tourist spot on the map – Google Trips can help you piece through all the logistics, in a simple and straightforward way. Although beware: you need to have an existing and active Gmail account for most of the features listed below to work efficiently.
- It streamlines all your bookings: Without having to manually enter anything, Google Trips will bundle your flight, hotel, rental car and restaurant bookings – as long as all your invoices and receipts are in your Gmail inbox. Now, this is not without limitations and picking up information from your inbox is not seamless yet. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to add data manually. Be that as it may, it is beautiful when it works.
- Day Plans for 200 cities: Day Plans are suggested themed itineraries that the app offers you. With over 200 cities and their data at hand, it creates an itinerary with six main features: Reservations, Things to Do, Saved Places, Day Plans, Food & Drink and Getting Around. And the best part – it all comes with ratings and reviews from other travellers in the area.
- Supremely customised: Depending on where you’re planning to go, the ‘Things To Do’ tab will present the things the region is famous for – for eg. If Dubai is your location of choice, the app throws up reccos from amongst ‘Luxury Malls’ and ‘Architectural Icons’. Similarly, It even customises the tab according to your taste and interests, based on what it knows about you, which let’s admit it – is a lot by now! So if you’re a football fan, expect a notification to pop up when you’re near a famous stadium.
- Rich offline data: Whether you’re in a location where the network is spotty, or facing a dearth of free WiFi zones on an expensive data pack – everything that the app offers you can be saved for offline use with a single tap!
- It can see your past: Perhaps a little creepy, we cannot deny the convenience of having all the past trips (as long as flight/hotel details etc. are in your Gmail inbox) in one place. A major advantage, of course, is if you want to return to a restaurant you went to or relive moments without having to rake your brain. But if you’d rather not have the stroll down memory lane, you can delete previous trips quite easily.
And like all things truly good, the app is available to download for free, for both Android and iOS. This is especially significant because some of the apps that did offer all that Google Trips offers, came at a premium and were paid apps.
You can download the app here for Android and here for IOS! Arent we so helpful 🙂
As for your travel gear needs, you always have Bragpacker!