Trip planning courts a lot of attention in the travel world. Everyone in travel seems to agree that the trip planning function for users is terribly messy, time consuming and in many cases, altogether frustrating. It's not a surprise then, that Americans don't use their vacation time.
According to research conducted by Project: Time Off, powered by the US Travel Association, from 2000 to 2013, the average employee has steadily reduced the amount of vacation time taken, from 20.9 days per year to just 16 (in other countries, up to 41 days off are granted each year). That doesn’t mean we’re not thinking about it! According to comScore in its report State of Travel 2017, 71% of US internet population is thinking about a trip in the next 12 months.
It’s not shocking then to learn that attempts to produce a bona fide, end to end planning capability keep showing up. One that receives allot of attention in the last couple of years is Google, which introduced Google Trips back in 2016.
Inspired, or challenged by, a couple of reviews we read, How to use Google Trips for planning and during a trip and another, Google Trips; The Best App for Planning your Next Vacation, we wanted to take a shot at comparing Relovate’s Trip Management Platform to Mother Google and her aspirations to help you plan trips. Remember, Google Trips is not an online travel agent, like Expedia and Orbitz and others, so if you would like a comparison to those, please see our trip management comparison chart here.
We fully acknowledge this is our view, and we’re more than a little biased, so read on with that caveat communicated.
To help compare Google Trips specifically, we took a look at the technology offered, how that tech delivers trip automation for faster more convenient organizing, the usability across different planning stages, the opportunity to book, usefulness when you are on the road, and then more granular trip requirements such as travel options integrated. We also looked at how it helps with saving trip history and, for kicks, whether it could be used to collaborate with friends, share trips or publish them to different social platforms.
We reduced it all to a table for your reference. If you’ve got any feedback for us, feel free to reach out to us at contact@relovate.com.