Google Enters The Travel Market, Will Create Your Next Vacation For You

June 29, 2009 at 4:47 PM | by Omri | Comment (1)

There's probably a good chance that the recession is keeping you home this summer, enjoying a staycation and maybe kicking back with some virtual tours. But if you're still planning to leave your neighborhood for parts unknown, Google is ready to help you plan your vacation.

The Internet search giant just unveiled its new Google City Tours, a service designed to outright create whole itineraries for travelers. Type in the name of your city and City Tours will return a series of trips designed to take you around the area's major landmarks. It displays locations, hours, and even the estimated time you should expect to spend at each site.

City Tours is more than just a database of locations though. The service uses Google Maps to figure out which landmarks are closest to each other and then plans your day accordingly. Each day starts at 10am and the schedule accounts for expected walking or driving distances. The default itinerary is three days but you can tweak it to match how long you'll actually be in town.

There are definitely still some bugs to work out. We tested it for Los Angeles and half the links in the sidebar were unreadable. More problematically, the Guardian ran it through the paces for some UK destinations and it tried to direct them to a nightclub on a Friday morning. But as a first attempt it's undeniably very, very cool.

Related Stories:
· Google City Tours
· Maps Coverage [Jaunted]
· Google Coverage [Jaunted]

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