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Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

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Re: Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

#51

Post by monksy »

gregoire wrote: post #26

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 pla…

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).

Re: Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

#52

Post by jmiserez »

eco wrote: post #21
Oletros wrote: post #3

Doesn't work with Google Apps accounts, fail

Does anyone have a solution for old users of Google Apps (back when it was called Google Apps For My Domain) that just want it to be like a regular Google account but keep their email address? It's very frustrating that everything Google does may or may not work for those of us that just use Google Apps like a regular google account. I don't use any of the organization features. I don't manage a collection of users.…

I don't think they'll ever have such a button. What I'm doing is auto-forwarding all mail from GApps to my regular Gmail account. And as I added the GApps account as an outgoing account/identity in Gmail, I can send/receive from my regular Gmail account, but with it showing the GApps custom domain address in all my emails. If you did this, at least you could still keep your GApps email adress even if you started over with everything else (purchases, etc).

Re: Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

#53

Post by binarysolo »

SonicSoul wrote: post #38

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…

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.)

Re: Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

#54

Post by tedmiston »

JOnAgain wrote: post #8

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'.

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.

Re: Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

#55

Post by drtse4 »

gregoire wrote: post #26

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 pla…

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.

Re: Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

#56

Post by tedmiston »

SEJeff wrote: post #18
JOnAgain wrote: post #8

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'.

Tripadvisor is much better in Europe and yelp is better than Tripadvisor in the US in my limited experience.

Foursquare is worth checking out (over Yelp or complementary to Yelp) in a lot of US cities too, definitely in SF and NYC.

Re: Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

#57

Post by tedmiston »

tmaly wrote: post #48

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.

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

Re: Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

#58

Post by scotth »

rajathagasthya wrote: post #2

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.

Did you know there's a "Trips" section in the navigation drawer?

https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/6228360?hl=en under the "Find your Trip in Inbox" header

Re: Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist

#59

Post by cheriot »

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

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