There are a lot of travel apps in the Play Store but the newest one, Google Trips, is mighty impressive. The app launched earlier this week and aims to be the one app you go to for information about your trip and to help you plan it. Best of all (besides being free) is that it can work completely offline, saving you data usage while you are traveling internationally. The leverages travel reservations received in Gmail to determine where you are going on a trip and stores that information in the Reservations section of the app. There you can see your car, hotel and air travel all in one place. There are other sections too such as Things to Do. This gives you recommendations on things around where you will be traveling that you can do to get to explore the city you are visiting. Once you find something you like, tap the star icon for that things and it will be added to your Saved places so you can keep track of them and plan them into your trip.
Other sections include Day plans which gives you recommended a set plan of sites or things to visit in a city and helps you plan your day to see them all. This feature is great if you are going to a
Google Trips
new city and know there is a lot to do but aren’t sure how to get it all in. Google Trips takes a lot of the guess work out for you.
There is also a Food & Drink section to help you find restaurants, bars and other eateries, a Getting around section to help you figure out transportation in the city you are visiting and a Need to Know section for things like nearby hospitals, emergency numbers and the like.
Google Trips has actually been in beta for several months and it is an excellent, well designed app overall. I’ve used it on my last several business trips and have found it to be a big help, even in cities where I know the places to go and see. What I really like about it is the fact it can be used offline. For any trip you have in the app, just use the toggle to Download and all of your plans will be downloaded for that trip. This is a big benefit if you travel internationally where most carriers charge a huge amount for data overseas.
Google Trips is free and available in the Play Store.
