
Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist - shekhar101
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/19/12943054/google-trips-travel-app-android-ios
======
kyletns
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.

~~~
pfranz
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.

~~~
ethanbond
I don't think "ask the locals" resolves to "ask one local and listen to his
opinion even if it is plainly bad."

Just like your app can offer a decent list, a single local will be able to as
well. Ask 5 locals and you'll often find all of them name at least 1 or 2 of
the same places.

Also, asking questions in order to receive helpful answers is a skill that
takes practice. Other factors can also seriously affect the response you get,
such as asking the question in English versus at least attempting to ask in
the native tongue.

------
gregoire
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/)

~~~
drtse4
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.

------
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

~~~
orthoganol
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
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
> This is why travel is an insanely hard business.

Ha, yes, it seems like there's always a travel start up failing.

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

~~~
prteja11
+1 this - I have been to London recently and Tripadvisor has much more reviews
about restaurants/POI than Yelp.

------
rajathagasthya
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.

~~~
scotth
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
Ah, yes. I feel dumb now. :) For some reason, opening the navigation drawer
isn't my first thought.

------
baby
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
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
Doesn't seem to work :/

------
Kikawala
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/)

------
avitzurel
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. :)

------
globile
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!

------
fudged71
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.

------
caio1982
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
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
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
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)

------
ephimetheus
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...

------
webrender
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.

------
SonicSoul
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!

~~~
binarysolo
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
some countries (like Japan) will also have a cheap wifi internet device you
can rent. in Tokyo this was a few bucks a day

------
huangc10
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
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.

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

------
Oletros
Doesn't work with Google Apps accounts, fail

~~~
eco
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.
All I wanted was a GMail account with my domain like Google originally
offered. I feel like a second class citizen in Google's ecosystem because of
my Google Apps account.

I'm not even sure what would happen if I tried switch this account to a
regular Google account. Google used to (and maybe they still do) allow you to
use any email address for your google account but if you wanted to use GMail
you needed an @gmail.com address. If I bit the bullet and switched to a
@gmail.com account could I keep my data and Play store purchases? I'm guessing
the answer to that is "no" so not only would I have to lose my email address,
I might have to repurchase quite a bit. Can you import all of your data from
one account to another using Takeout?

My dream is that Google will offer a "Make this a regular Google account"
button. I don't want to change the email address I've used for 15 years just
because Google pulled the rug out from under me after getting me to switch to
Google apps.

~~~
jmiserez
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).

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

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

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

------
guard-of-terra
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
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.

~~~
skinnymuch
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
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.

------
joeyspn
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.ht...](http://phys.org/news/2016-09-eu-aims-
deploy-5g-technology.html)

/rant

~~~
wutbrodo
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.

~~~
joeyspn
The thing is they are marketing it for Spain (or European travel) in their
video [0]. Maybe because Spain, France and Italy are in the top 4 travel
destinations world-wide along with the US...

The focus of my critique (rant?) is that the presentation video only shows:

1- Ignorance about the destination with so many clichés and misleading
stereotypes.

2- disrespect for many locals (like me)

 _> I'll be the one to tell you that the world is larger than the US, EU and
UK_

Brilliant observation, but if you are marketing your app for European travel,
don't mislead travellers showing goats in a Barcelona street and show respect
for the locals.

 _> The assertion that having data is a perfect replacement for an offline
travel guide is a bizarre one._

Where is that assertion? It's _a personal preference_. As you may know there's
not a single/universal way of travelling, there's also people that might
prefer a satellite phone... Your preference of connectivity is irrelevant, but
for many people having free wifi/4g renders this offline-first app useless in
european soil.

Whenever I've visited the americas (north/south) a working SIM with a data
plan has been enough for me...

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ign2GmVEflw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ign2GmVEflw)

