Organizing a trip or vacation can be a source of stress, even more than work! Many therefore prefer to rely on travel agencies to be able to purchase an "all-inclusive" package and enjoy a carefree holiday as much as possible. From today, however, we have an interesting alternative: we can organize our entire trip with a simple smartphone or tablet, relying on mom Google! In this guide we will see what Google Trips is and how to best use it to organize trips.
Google Trips: complete guide
Installation
Let's first install the app, it's free for Android and iOS.
DOWNLOAD | Android
DOWNLOAD | iOS
Please note: currently the app is only in English, but the english language will be added soon.
First impressions
The app comes with a really modern and captivating interface.
The app will immediately show us the city detected by GPS position, while at the bottom the cities or places already visited in the past, with the possibility of immediately organizing "trips" (real travel packages).
In addition to the recommended cities we will be able to search in the bar "Where do you want to go?" any other desired city or place of interest.
Excellent recognition of english locations, even if the app is in English. Have we chosen our destination in the world? Once typed in Google Trips we will have a similar screen, in which to configure every aspect of the trip.
Once the trip has been configured with the various screens, we can save it by tapping on Create Trip.
We can download the "trips" locally to check our trip even offline: the app will download all the useful maps for the travel area in advance.
Organize a vacation or a trip
But how to set up a trip? Here is an overview of all the screens offered by the app. Many features are not yet active, but the potential is already visible.
In Reservations we can find all our reservations: plane or train tickets, hotels, B & Bs etc. The peculiarity of this function is that it integrates perfectly with our Gmail, to the point of automatically adding all the reservations that we will receive in the Google email.
In Things to do we will have the opportunity to choose what to do in the place, what it actually offers to visit. There is really everything: from places of cultural interest to monuments and religious places, passing through attractions, places of "nightlife" (entertainment) and even themed places (such as clubs for homosexuals).
On the screen Saved Places we can check the places on which we have added the "star" in the previous screen, in a nutshell the places we have added as favorites.
Another very interesting screen is Day Plans, which allows you to organize your days with complete itineraries. If we don't know what to see in 2-3 days in a particular city we can use one of these themed itineraries (architecture, antiquity, religious travel etc.).
On the screen Food & Drink we will be able to obtain a list of the culinary specialties of the place and of course the places we can go to to eat and drink. If you are a foodie you will surely want to taste the typical dishes of the place, while if you are a fashionist you will not wait to discover the most "in" pubs and discos in the area.
On the screen Getting around we will be provided with all the information on transport: how to get to the location, how to take public transport and how to call a taxi. Alternatively, it will provide you with directions to get around by car, on foot or by bike.
Finally the screenshot Need to know will provide you with important information on things to know about local services. We will be able to check the hospitals in the area, the pharmacies open with night shift but also something more "soft" such as the opening hours of the shops, the type of currency used and where to change it, any tourist taxes to pay and the presence of hotspots to connect to the internet.
Google Trips: conclusions
Will the app retire classic travel agencies? Hard to say now, but the potential of this app is very high: we can really control every aspect of a hypothetical vacation using tools that Google already provided in various apps (Gmail and Maps on all). If before to organize a trip we had to use 3-4 different apps, now we can use a single app, comfortable, easy to configure and with the right balance between user intervention and itineraries suggested by the app.
It could soon become a Best-App, we just have to wait for the activation of the functions not yet integrated and the translation in the languages not yet available.
