I’d give my weight in gold for an all-in-one Google travel app

I just returned from my annual holiday on South Africa’s hot and humid eastern coastline. As much as I enjoy seeing family, eating great food, and even flying to an extent, I loathe the necessary admin that supports my festive fun. Before any holiday commences, you’ll find me face-deep in my phone, juggling multiple emails, boarding passes, restaurant reservations, and a list of attractions I’m interested in. This also includes my partner’s details in case her phone wanders off on its own adventure. This process gets really messy, but it doesn’t have to be. Google can lend a welcome hand with an all-encompassing Google travel app.

There was a time when Google had a travel app in its toolkit. In 2016, it announced Trips, a smart travel agent that managed your errant digital travel paraphernalia. It was well ahead of its time and monitored various services, including Gmail, for transport, accommodation, and restaurant bookings. Users could manually include car rental information and other notes for more personal items. Trips also stretched beyond your email by providing places of interest in the city you’re visiting without any prompts. This was particularly helpful for my first trip to Berlin many years ago when I didn’t know my brot from my brötchen.

However, as Google is wont to do, it shuttered Trips in 2019 and failed to offer an alternative solution or a replacement. Yes, Google does have a Travel web portal that acts as a broader search tool for accommodation, flights, points of interest, and travel recommendations. However, it lacks several core features that make Trips useful. The portal is more a tool for planning a getaway rather than minimizing admin while you’re on one.

As I’ve mentioned in the intro, travelers often use multiple tools to prepare for and while enjoying a holiday. Information is scattered across these platforms, hidden deep within sequential taps, swipes, screens, and search results. Personally, I need Google Calendar for scheduling, Google Maps for points of interest, Waze for road safety alerts, Google Flights for airline bookings, Wallet for payments and passes, and Gmail for almost everything else. Others may save tickets and reservations in Drive, bookmark websites in Chrome, or create itineraries in Sheets. That’s some incredible fragmentation. The last thing I want to do after an hours-long flight is spend more energy than necessary finding key reservation details or itineraries for the next day.

A Google travel app would merge the strengths of these services, allow users to access all their essential info from a single place, and provide a gateway through which other Google properties can be accessed. This wouldn’t be difficult to do, and Google is not alien to such an arrangement. Workspace is the hub through which the company’s various office products are accessed. It makes complete sense that a travel hub offers similar functionality to pen in disparate information.

From this fictional centralized app I’ve imagined, I wouldn’t need to search through Gmail to find reservation attachments. Nor would I have to check if I’m free on a particular day in Calendar. Everything would be laid out for me, ready to access. I could even get suggestions for nearby points of interest borrowed from Maps. And, because Google is already well versed in allowing collaboration between users on its platforms, I’d be able to better plan with friends and family, house their essential details, and access this info on any device: watch, tablet, phone, or browser. That’s my dream scenario.

Although many users don’t like the idea of social elements within apps that don’t particularly require them, user-provided reviews and recommendations drive my interest in new places, especially on Maps. Google has since stripped it of these features, especially public lists, but a travel app would be a suitable new home for this information. Users could browse a selection of places of interest created by reliable contributors, making vacation planning much smoother.

Organizing a trip to Rome? If you want to try local cuisine but have no idea where to start, hop on to the travel app, browse some ready-made Google Maps public lists from the travel app, and start your journey from there. Instead, third-party services like Mapstr and Step: Your World are providing an alternative, albeit paid and little known.

Google also lacks a dedicated app for bookings management. Even though Google’s Travel website houses all these features, why isn’t it offered in a standalone app on a device I’m likely to use during a holiday? Similarly, Google Maps offers various booking options for accommodation, but wouldn’t a travel app make a more sensible place for this information? Centralizing these items under a single umbrella app makes it easier to go through Google for bookings and payments. As much as Google wants me to, I’m not about to get my laptop out just to search

I want to acknowledge the current list of products filling this void on Google’s behalf. I recently gave Wanderlog a spin, but it’s not as seamless as I’d like a travel app to be. Plenty of manual commands are required; I’d instead like an app to do the donkey work for me. Several features are also locked behind the Pro version, which somewhat dulls whatever shine I have for the app. That said, a Google app inspired by Wanderlog genuinely appeals to me.

There’s a clear niche here for Google to capitalize on. No other company has all the ingredients for a succulent product that would sate the appetite of travelers hungry for organization. For Google, there’s a financial incentive, too. I’d be more likely to use a Google app to organize my itinerary and book my bed and wheels than a third-party option. The interconnectivity of Google products, including Wallet, my email, and my calendar, also plays a major role in my reasoning here.

The seeds for a great app are already there, too. As much as I loathe using Google’s web Travel portal, there are some incredibly useful features there. The breakdown of average stay pricing, peak and off-season data, and climate information are all splendidly presented.

There’s also a huge room for a Gemini-powered vacation drafting tool in my dream Google travel app to keep up with the trends. I often use the AI as a wireframe for road trips, distances traveled, and timelines. Using natural language to describe the broad strokes of my potential trip is far easier than two-stepping between Google Maps and Search, so it would only make sense for it to be a crucial part of the travel planning and management experience.

While I don’t think you should hold your breath for the revival of Trips, Google should do more to give users a viable travel offering. It’s been a long while since I’ve been excited by a practical Google product. Gemini Live is “cool,” but it’s not integral to my daily life. A travel app would be. I’d be the first on the bus if we ever get a Google Travel app. Would you be second?