GOOGLE TRIPS SERIES

GOOGLE TRIPS SERIES

There was also a “continue exploring” section, which is basically a collection of things people would typically search about a trip, such as best restaurants in the area and nearby events.Ī travel guide links to a page that offers a list of local attractions (complete with Google user reviews), a map and directions (through Google Maps of course), a series of travel videos produced by various media sources (this felt kind of random), and then links to other nearby destinations.

Under Upcoming Trips was a reservation I have for an Airbnb at The Sea Ranch early in June labeled “Weekend in Sea Ranch” with a tab below to “continue planning” (don’t mind if I do).Ĭlicking that brought me to my Weekend in Sea Ranch page that listed options such as “travel research,” which claimed to be for saved searches and price tracking, but I could not easily figure this part out. When I entered Google Trips, it listed under Past Trips all my travel dating back to 2014 (there was a lot).

We’ll leave the convenience versus privacy debate for another time. It has some Potential Trips lined up “based on your recent activity” as well. For anyone with a Google account, you might be pleasantly surprised (or slightly freaked out) to find that Google already has any current or past travel reservations, confirmations for which were sent to your gmail account, already loaded up. To get a sense of where Google Travel currently is and where it could and maybe should go, I put it to the test on an existing trip as well as on an upcoming one. Last year, Google Flights added a feature that allows users to get push notifications when there is a predicted flight delay. Earlier this year, Google Hotels added vacation rentals to its search option. Start researching flights on your smartphone while in line to get coffee, then pick it up back on your desktop during your lunch break (we feel you, Google).Īnd if it seems like this isn’t a new endeavor for Google, that’s because Google Travel, and all its moving pieces, is very much an ongoing project that includes constant updates in features and usability.

The idea is to provide a single place to organize all the things related to your travel planning for any given trip into one comprehensive itinerary, complete with the ability to edit and adjust different elements of the trip across devices as you go. Google Travel marries all of Google’s existing travel properties-Google Flights, Google Hotels, Google Trips, and Google Maps-into a single destination that can now be used across mobile and desktop devices (it was previously only accessible on mobile). So it makes sense that the online behemoth has its sights set on becoming an all-encompassing travel planning and booking resource through Google Travel, the latest iteration of which launched this month. And many of us already handle a lot of that using Google. There are a lot of moving pieces when it comes to researching and booking travel, including choosing dates, reserving flights and hotels, and filling out the itinerary with things to see, do, and eat.

Google trips