How To Plan Trips Using Google Travel?
- Lifestyle Tour Guides Travel
Mridula Chakraborty- 1
- 16 minutes read
People often find reasons to travel to distinct places just to break the monotonicity of their lives, isn’t it? Therefore, they plan trips accordingly. However, if venturing out into newer places, it is fairly difficult to have the best of the place without proper guidance. This is where the Google Travel feature helps one. Earlier known as Google Trips, this feature aids in planning trips efficiently as it hosts several features and options that support the same.
What Is Google Travel?
Google Travel (formerly Google Trips) is a trip planner that operates on Google Maps and helps in knowing about travel destinations and other relevant details to the user. The feature was launched on the website first and then found its way into Android and IOS mobile app stores making it more convenient to access. Prior to the rebranding, it was a tool that was incorporated into Google maps itself but then the company considered launching it as a standalone feature.
How To Use Google Travel?
Using this Google product is no rocket science and can be mastered really fast. It has many features, settings, and filters to ease your trip planning. This article will provide you with a brief of all these options for optimising your experience with this planner. For starting your research regarding travel destinations and other required details, open the Google Travel website and browse through the functions and settings provided below.
1. Explore
This option lets you choose your location and the destination that you are wanting to visit. Therefore, enter the details asked for in the sections like Where from, Where To, Number of persons, and choice of flight class (in case you prefer air travel). It also provides the option of choosing a round flight or a one-way one. In addition, the duration of travel and the time you would want to undertake the journey are also to be entered. The filters include the following features:
- Stops: In case you choose a connected flight or railway travel then it shows you where the passenger vehicle stops. This would aid you in choosing the best travel option to reach your desired location as fast as possible.
- Travel Mode: Here you can select which places you can visit using plane or road travel modes. This enables you to know which locations are flight-friendly and the ones that are best if chased through the road. However, this Google trip planner highly favours air travel.
- Interests: This filter lets you enter your preferences that a location should have. For instance, popular attractions, skiing facilities, outdoor activities, museums, beaches, and the history of a place might affect your decision. This is how it helps you find the best-suited destination.
- Price: Here you can select your budget for travelling through various modes of transport. It would show the estimated ticket prices of flights. It enables one to have a rough idea of hotel expenses in the area.
- Airlines: This filter aids you in choosing whether you want to look at offers from all airlines or just the prominent ones.
- Duration: This option lets you decide the flight travel duration according to the urgency of travel. It ranges from under 1-hour flights to under 30-hour flights. You can also choose to go with the ones that offer any random travel duration.
- Bags: Flights often charge for extra luggage or if the weight exceeds that of 25 kgs. Therefore, this feature allows you to know of any additional charges that you might have to pay at the airport and be ready with it.
2. Things To Do
One of the most important things to know while travelling is what to explore once you reach your destination. This is what this feature aids you in. The “Things To Do” section on the aforementioned website has been divided into two sub-categories. These sub-sections have been discussed briefly below.
- Top Sights: After entering the location you want to visit, it shows you a list of major attractions or places that you should visit in the area. These places are nearby to the city or district you choose to visit. It also contains briefings of these places for a better understanding. Once you browse through the prominent sights, you can click on “See all top sights” and look for other areas to venture out. Else, you can try the option mentioned below.
- Top Sights By Interest: This section categorises the places to visit according to your interests. The categories it provides are kid-friendly, art and culture, history, outdoors, museums, and beaches. Each one of them hosts a list of notable sights that one should definitely go to. Some areas might not have attractions in these categories as not all places have beaches or major historical attractions.
3. Flights
While the explore section enables it all, there is a separate section for details on available flights. The Google Travel Flights section lets you know about the number of flights available and the prices in detail. It provides a higher number of options here than in the explore section, although the latter one has better filters to try. So, it is recommended that you use both options for a better planning experience.
4. Hotels
Finding the right hotel for you is no longer a daunting task if you use the Google Travel Hotel feature. You can customise the options shown to you using the various filters that they have enabled. All these filters have been mentioned below.
- Price: It lets you choose the price range that you are willing to spend on your hotel stay. It ranges from INR 0 to INR 14,000.
- Property Type: It enables you to choose the type of hostel residence you are looking for. The various categories available are Hostels, Spa hotels, Beach hotels, Resorts, Inns, Bed and breakfasts, Motels, and Other.
- Offers: If you are someone who loves to grab limited edition deals or other offers while travelling then this filter is for you. It enables you to choose from hotels that enable free cancellation, COVID-19-responder rooms, or special offers.
- Guest Rating: Here you can customise the hotel list according to the customer (guest) ratings they have received. The filter ratings range from 3.5 to 4.5+. However, you can also choose to go with the ones that have any random ratings.
- Hotel Class: This filter lets you choose which hotel class would be preferred by you after keeping in mind the budget and hotel stay experience. It provides the option of 2-star hotels (just basics), 3-star (quality comfort), 4-star (lots of extras), and 5-star (top service).
- Amenities: You can opt for the special facilities that you might require for travel. These amenities include free Wi-Fi, free breakfast, a restaurant, bar, child-friendly, pet-friendly, free parking, parking, room service, fitness centre, spa, pool, indoor pool, outdoor pool, air-conditioned, wheelchair accessible, beach access, and all-inclusive available.
- Brands: The ones who prefer the facilities provided by a certain hotel brand can explore this option. The brands listed here are Choice Hotels, Four Seasons, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott Bonvoy, OYO, Taj Hotels, and Vivanta.
- Eco-certified: If you prefer an eco-friendly way of working then you can choose to see which hotels are eco-certified before booking.
- Sort: This option lets you sort the list of hotels according to categories like relevance, lowest price, highest rating, and most reviewed.
The other information that would aid you are:
- Where To Stay: It would recommend areas and hotels that would enable you to have an optimum experience.
- When To Visit: This section lets you know the weather of the region, crowd, and hotel costs at different times of the year so you can plan your trip accordingly.
- What You’ll Pay: You get detailed information on the price ranges of hotels according to the facilities they provide and the class they belong to.
5. Holiday Rentals
Instead of booking hotel rooms, you can opt for flats, bungalows, or even guest houses during your vacation. It also lets you customise your selection by enabling the same filters that are used to find the perfect hotel. It has two categories that were also mentioned in the Google Travel Hotel section: where to stay and when to visit.
6. Tracked Flight Prices
This feature related to Google Travel Flights allows one to know the flight price changes that they chose to track and are thinking to book. It will notify you of any modifications in the price of these flights so you can plan the travel accordingly or change the flight preferences in time. This would deter problems caused due to travel budget imbalance at the last moment.
This Google trip planner operates worldwide, therefore, they have allowed one to customise settings that involve location, currency, and language for making it convenient to be used from any part of the world.
Travel Settings
The additional settings that Google Travel hosts are explained below.
- Flight Price Alerts: Enabling this option would send you personalised updates on flight prices to your preferred locations. It allows one to “receive price alerts and booking tips for flights.”
- Hotel Price Alerts: It works the same way flight price alerts do. One can “receive deal alerts and booking tips for hotels” through this option.
- Travel Tips: You can “receive tips to help you get ready for an upcoming trip, such as the weather forecast, how to get around, and more” after allowing this setting to work.
- Travel Guidance: This feature lets one “receive emails for COVID-19 travel guidance changes.”
You need to enable location history to receive personalised travel updates and suggestions.
Wrapping It Up!
Google Travel is one of the best trip planners that one should try as it is available globally and gives a perfect overview of essential details while travelling. In addition, the several options and filters ease the task of finding the right places to visit, the hotels to stay, and the travel mode to choose. It even allows one to get personalised travel suggestions and tips for making their experience better. Therefore, if you are planning a trip sometime soon and opting to visit a place that you have never before, then use this Google trip planner for a smoother journey. But yes, before that refer to our article closely and learn how to use google travel effectively.
1 Comment
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