Have you been planning to head out on a city trip? If so, then planning your city trip using Google Maps is crucial – and fortunately, this is where our experts can help.
With this thought in mind, today, we’re looking at some of the key things you need to know about planning a city trip – and, critically, how Google Maps can help you plan your city trip easily as a result.
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Can I Be My Own Trip Planner With Google Maps?
If you’ve been planning a city trip, it’s well worth considering how you could take the pressure off. Indeed, planning any holiday is always a somewhat overwhelming endeavor, but it shouldn’t necessarily have to be this way. And, when you have the right tools, booking the ideal activities and coming up with an ideal itinerary becomes so much easier.
Trip Planner – Google My Maps
But did you know that you can take the role of “trip planner” to the next level with Google Maps? Many of us use Google Maps solely for planning out routes and for navigation purposes, but it’s effective for so much more than this. And, with the Google Maps “My Maps” feature, being a trip planner has never been easier.
How to Find the Perfect Trip with Google My Maps as a Trip Planner
If you’re looking for ways to plan your next city break, using Google Maps as a trip planner could be ideal. Indeed, trip planner jobs become almost effortless when using Google Maps, and there are countless opportunities you could consider to help with your trip planning overall.
Planning Where You’ll Stay
One of the first things that you will need to consider as part of trip planning for your next city break is where you’ll stay. Fortunately, Google Maps can help make planning where to stay a breeze.
One of the great features of Google Maps is that you can search for a very vague term – for example, “hotels in Vienna” or “b&bs in London” – and it’ll bring up a long list of different places to stay near your area. Since Google Maps will also show you the location of these hotels and destinations, this can allow you to choose the most suitable hotel option for your needs.
Find Local Activities and Suggestions in Google My Maps
Once you’ve planned where you’re hoping to stay, you’ll be able to start looking at things to do and activities near your chosen hotel.
Things to do Suggestions
Fortunately, this is again something that Google Maps as a trip planner can help with.
Simply searching for “things to do in [Location]” will often bring up a myriad of potential options and opportunities, all listed on the map so you can choose the best local activities for your trip.
In addition, it’s also worth considering that, since these activities will often be grouped together, Google Maps as a trip planner can help you choose which activities to do for each day. Reducing the amount of travel time between each activity could potentially save several hours on a jam-packed day.
This could allow you to see even more great sights and activities during your trip – while also cutting the travel cost.
Dining Options
This point is also strongly applicable when it comes to booking your dining options, too. One of the highlights of a great city break for many people is the delicious food.
Luckily, Google My Maps allows you to readily search for the best local restaurants, eateries, food chains, and more. In turn, this can allow you to pick out amazing dining options that are local to your chosen hotel or activities.
See Distances and Routes Between Activities
Planning your activities carefully is crucial – and as we already mentioned, using a trip planner such as Google Maps can help you choose activities that are close by to one another and that will require less traveling time.
However, Google also goes a step further with this, allowing for route planning between the different activities you’ve selected on Google Maps.
This allows you to work out the most effective way to get from A to B to C, allowing you to pack as many great events into the day as possible.
Making Reservations and Booking Tickets Easily
An additional benefit of using a trip planner, such as Google Maps, is that you can easily make reservations or book tickets once you’ve found the options that suit you best.
Since Google Maps often lists the websites of activities and restaurants, you can effortlessly head to the booking page, without having to spend ages searching for the right activities manually.
This streamlines the process of booking your holiday, while also helping to ensure that you’re choosing the right destination – after all, it’s not uncommon for different restaurants to have very similar names, and getting confused between these is absolutely possible.
Compare Destination By Reviews
Reviews are an excellent way to determine whether a chosen activity, destination, hotel, or restaurant is likely to provide a good standard of service.
And fortunately, when using Google Maps as a trip planner, comparing destinations becomes effortless thanks to the reviews feature.
When searching for activities or establishments, you’ll be given a list of different places, and this will normally show their rating (out of five stars).
Selecting the location name will also allow you to see more details about it, including any past reviews left by other people. Doing so can allow you to choose the most suitable destination for your needs with a clear insight into the type of service provided. After all, businesses may be biased about their own services – but genuine past customer reviews give a much more honest insight.
Find Routes to Get To Your Accommodation
Route planning for any city break is critical, and Google Maps can help with this. In many cases, route planning for a destination you don’t know well can seem incredibly stressful.
However, with Google Maps, this process becomes a breeze. Google Maps allows you to select a starting and finishing location easily and provides plenty of suggested routes to choose from.
What’s more, you can also search by car, train, or even for walking routes with Google Maps.
As such, the app allows you the optimal level of freedom overall while also providing an excellent solution to help make route planning ten times easier.
And, since mobile data connections are typically pretty good in inner-city locations, you’ll be able to use Google Maps on the go to ensure you don’t get lost while navigating the city.
Plan Timings Accordingly
Some of us are blessed with excellent time management skills, and others are not so much. However, when planning your city visit, keeping an eye on the timings is critical – and Google Maps is massively helpful with this.
Since Google Maps will give you an idea of timings for traveling between different destinations, you’ll easily be able to use it as a trip planner to help find the most efficient routes.
In addition, this allows you to plan your day; for example, if you know your train is going to leave at 4 pm, you can work around this time to plan accordingly so that you still spend the most time on your city break possible without being late.
Limitations of Google Maps
Of course, one limitation of a trip planner such as Google Maps is that it’s never 100% accurate – so, always add a little extra time to Google’s estimates, just to be sure.
We also recommend that you consider the “business level” charts provided by Google; these can help you decide whether you’re visiting an attraction or restaurant at a peak time, which could cause you to leave later than expected.
Remember: time planning is vital. But, thanks to route planning features with Google Maps, you’ll be able to get to every destination with plenty of time to spare.
Save your Searches on Google My Maps
Once you’ve found a location, activity, or hotel that sounds good as part of your city trip, you can save your search to make this information much easier to find during your city break.
Plus, you can use the My Maps function to create an itinerary for your city trip, adding in different points of interest to help ensure your visit goes smoothly.
After all, there’s nothing worse than leaving a city trip of a lifetime – only to remember you missed seeing something amazing that you’d planned to do!
Final Thoughts
If you’ve been wondering about different ways to optimize your next city trip, you don’t need to go to a professional trip planner – Google Maps has all the tools you need!
Indeed, the Google Maps tool works excellently as a professional trip planner, allowing you to readily plan out your next visit and optimize the time accordingly.
If you’d like to find out more about using Google Maps as a trip planner for your next city trip, such as for a family holiday to Vienna, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our experts today. We’re here to help, and we’ll do what we can to make your trip and route planning with Google Maps that little bit easier.
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Google My Maps Trip Planner – How to plan a trip [Easy Guide] was last modified: August 31st, 2022 by