It was only a matter of time. Finally, Google is tailoring its usefulness for holidaymakers into one digestible app: Destinations.
It’s fair to assume that plenty of holidaymakers nowadays rely on Google for a lot of things. It could be maps of cities, searching for landmarks, checking opening times of venues or even looking up hotels.
You find one or two hotels you like, you open up a few tabs to check on reviews. Another tab for local amenities, all while your flight operator pops up with car rental or hotel options of its own. Tabs galore.
An organised person can stay on top of all this but, in truth, it’s bloody annoying. So now, with Destinations available on mobile, Google is making things easier.
Well packed
Destinations is a lot of assistance packed into one app. You can use it to browse for ideas, find good prices for flights or accommodation and even steal decent itineraries.
It only works on mobile, which makes sense as it’s the platform you most likely to use when travelling. It’s probably the most likely platform you use in general.
“The feature is available in the UK, US, France and Germany at the moment, but we will roll this out to other countries in the imminent future,” says a Google spokesperson.
Users simply search, through Google, for a city they want to travel to and add the word ‘destination’.
Google Flights and Hotel search gets the basics dealt with, but there’s plenty more under the hood.
So, for example, you don’t have to look up ‘Lisbon destinations’ if you’re a bit non-committal about location. Instead, you could just put in ‘Portugal surfing’, if that’s your thing. Google, then, collates its info and shows you some options.
You can leave dates up in the air, monitor weather, plan and cost your trip, all without opening dozens of tabs.
Google is not (yet) looking to become a salesperson, leaving that instead as it is, so you need to go through hotel websites, airline websites etc to make bookings.
*This article was updated on 10 March at 10am to include comments from a Google spokesperson.
Main holiday packing image via Shutterstock
