Planning your vacations through and through is no easy task when you know little of the location you are about to visit. Once you arrive, it is equally difficult to keep track of the routes without a cheap data roaming plan. Luckily, the whole travel planning experience might have just gotten simpler thanks to Google’s new mobile application.
Google Trips is a free app that will organise your plane tickets and hotel reservations, combining it with editorial guides, and top spots to see. Through data analysis, it will adjust your journey to your interests and time constraints. Most importantly, all content including maps, can be downloaded in advance to your smartphone and work in offline mode.
Personalised recommendations basing on one’s Google history sounds like a useful feature, but without doubt they also raise the issue of privacy. Some users already report that the app is slightly interfering when browsing e-mails and previous locations with the goal of adding them to its repository of trip plans.
Another concern proposed by Gavin Haines relates to the enriching characteristics of travelling that may be taken away by the application. In its own promotion video, Google unknowingly shows the effects of vanishing human interactions. A young traveller seeking advice on nearby attractions prefers to consult her smartphone, rather than continue talking with the local hotel receptionist.
For the time being users may expect to work with the “top 200 cities”. It is a reasonable amount considering the app is out for no longer than a week, and still in need of some fixes. At the moment the application may look to compete with TripIt, however the latter is more business travel related and lacks a number of features. Also Airbnb is struggling to introduce Airbnb Trips, a travel app of their own.
Google Trips is a big step towards improving journeys into new places. I am yet to test it during my next excursion, but I would definitely like to hear your initial thoughts on the future of this application.
Krystian Palczewski 384439
Sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/google-travel-app-wants-to-be-your-tour-guide-but-is-that-a-good-thing/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreymorrison/2016/09/21/google-trips-review/#370bca3f603b
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/19/12943054/google-trips-travel-app-android-ios
https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pIDaG-nuP5xVSLGPV_rMHk7a_zM=/800×0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7115481/ImageJoiner-2016-09-16%20at%2012.08.13%20PM.png
Thanks for your interesting post Krystian.
I believe Google Trips is a very promising app. Currently a lot of different sources are used to find information for your “to visit” destinations, like books (LonelyPlanet), other online sources (TripAdvisor) and as an additional service with your booking (Booking.com). Google trips makes the process more efficient, as all needed information is in one app, this leaves more time to enjoy the trip itself, instead of planning it while you are there.
However I do agree, that travelling is for a huge part about interacting with local people and experiencing the culture the most this way. Plus, the local Hostel staff probably knows best what to do and what not to do. This however depend on the (type of) traveller, how they feel about the travel experience and what they want to do on site. For this reason I believe the app can replace the above mentioned travel documents (after improvements), and it is up to the traveller how to use it.
Interesting read Krystian,
I personally feel as if Google is inventing the ‘right’ (at least somewhat relevant) solution for the wrong reason. I see multiple applications for Google Trips, and I believe it will be a valuable tool for many end-users – especially as “Generation Z’ moves towards the age where they start planning their own vacations and trips. Unfortunately the business model behind Google Trips is based on mining, extracting and collecting additional information from its users. This in hand allows Google to target its users with increasingly personalized ads.
As consumers of multiple Google products it is often easy to forget just how much information we willingly give up to them. In exchange we get a ‘personalized’ internet experience with tailored ads and offerings as established by their AI / algorithms. While I’m sure Google has no bad intentions, it is still a bit unsettling that a for-profit corporation has so much control over my personal internet experience.
As such I will not be using the Google Trips app myself. I think the majority of us are better of utilizing alternative means to organize our trips –
unless, of course, you specifically crave that identical vacation experience as those other soon to be thousands of Google Trip users.
.
Hi Krystian, thank you for your post! In addition to what you’ve written, I’ve also come across a blog that talks about the main problems a user can face with mobile travel applications. Of these, I believe the most important one applicable when abroad, is that many applications assume always-on data connection. This means that the minute you lose internet, the application stops working. If you’re unlucky, it’ll happen when you need it the most too, like when you need to show your mobile ticket to the conductor. Now imagine being abroad, you won’t have internet everywhere – if the application is designed like the EuroStar application, you won’t even be able to use the contact information list without internet, meaning you won’t be able to call in case an issue occurs. Therefore, I think a feature that would make Google Trips more successful is to ensure that some part of the application works without internet connection, or at least that the previously downloaded items won’t be deleted.
– https://www.tnooz.com/article/five-big-problems-with-mobile-travel-applications-and-a-bonus-one-for-android-users/