Google Trips for iOS and Android can help you with holiday vacation travel planning
The summer is just about over. Children are back in school, the temperatures are slowly dropping, and soon enough, the leaves will begin falling from the trees.
Summer vacations are now in the rear view mirror, meaning it is holiday-related travel coming up down the road. Around the USA, many families will begin planning for both Thanksgiving and Christmas getaways. Google Trips, a new app for Android and iOS, is designed to help people plan their trips, with a focus on offline use for when someone is without an internet connection. Keep in mind, it will work for all travel -- not just holiday related plans.
"Google Trips is a personalized tour guide in your pocket. Each trip contains key categories of information, including day plans, reservations, things to do, food and drink, and more, so you have everything you need at your fingertips. The entire app is available offline -- simply tap the 'Download' button under each trip to save it to your phone", says Stefan Frank, Product Manager, Google Trips.
Frank further says, "for the top 200 cities in the world, Google Trips shows you a variety of day plans featuring the most popular daily itineraries. We've automatically assembled the most popular sights, attractions, and local gems into a full day's tour -- all based on historic visits by other travelers. Say you're visiting Barcelona. You can choose from multiple day plans, like 'Eixample District', which maps out the can't-miss buildings by Antoni Gaudi, the famous Spanish architect".
If you use Gmail, 'Trips' will monitor your email, automatically pulling in all travel related information. This means that you can count on your travel information being imported into this new app even if you forget to manually enter it. With that said, nothing is perfect, so before leaving for your vacation, it is probably wise to double-check.
Another really great aspect of the app is the offline aggregation of important travel itinerary information, such as details on hotel reservations and airlines. When traveling overseas in particular, it is possible that an American's smartphone will not have a cellular connection. Even if a connection is available, it can be very costly. Google has created a digital vault of sorts, providing piece of mind that travelers can always access their documents and plans.
Will you leverage Google Trips for your Thanksgiving or Christmas travel plans? Tell me in the comments. You can download it using the links below.