Google announced in September that it is launching a new technology that will relieve you of all the stress of vacation planning. Its newest technology, the Trips app, will be your all-inclusive travel companion on your next trip. Not only will it provide you with all the critical information you need to make your stay hassle-free, but it will also be your all-in-one guidebook, giving you sightseeing attractions, restaurant suggestions, and even recommendations based on your data. It is certainly set to shake up the online travel agency (OTA) market as users venture toward an all-inclusive way of handling all their information.
To use the app, you will need a Gmail account: this is where it will pull your flight information and hotel reservations from. Having other Google products helps as well, such as the Maps app or Destination app. Trips will then populate all the data within these products in order to provide you with all the crucial information for your journey. The big benefit? Its all in one single platform so you wont need to go back and forth between apps and emails while you're on the go. The app leverages the companies ability to tap into the data you have stored in your Gmail.
All of this information can be accessed on the app without connecting to wifi or data, which can be pricey when traveling abroad. According to Google blog, "With Google Trips, all your travel reservations are automatically gathered from Gmail and organized for you into individual trips, so you don't have to search and dig up those emails. They're waiting for you within the reservations tile, even without Wi-Fi."
For those who prefer to stay away from the crowds and tourist attractions while they travel, Trips allows you to automatically suggest options around a specific place you want to see or a specified set of criteria. A "magic wand" feature throws up random options just like the "I Feel Lucky" button on Google Search. Users can pin any new locales they like and develop an itinerary tailored for their interests within minutes.
Trips has little direct competitors with the features and capabilities it contains, the closest being Concur's TripIt. TripIt is more tailored to the business travel section of the market, where it comes at a price of $49.00 per year for its pro version and offers real flight alerts or helps you book a new airline ticket should your flight get delayed or cancelled. Instead, according to Time, "Google Trips excels at cutting down on the amount of time it takes to plan out activities and transportation options while traveling," giving it a strategic advantage in the leisure travel market by having a differentiated product with no direct competitors.
Although, Airbnb, Expedia, and Priceline are all competing to acquire mobile customers, Google's all-in-one convenience adds value for the customer that these online travel agencies (OTA) aren't capable of doing, and this opens the door for Google to acquire a significant portion of that leisure travel market segment. With this product, along with it Maps, the potential for Google to acquire a large portion of the market is significant and shows why they chose to focus on travel now.
According to Forbes, "in 2015, direct leisure travel spending by domestic and international travelers in the U.S. was more than $ 650 billion and nearly four out of five domestic trips were taken for leisure purpose. This indicates the strong potential of the market for leisure travel - the segment which Google Trips targets."
Google's ability to provide a differentiated product to customers gives it a competitive advantage-providing travelers with one single platform that contains all relevant information to make the most out your vacation. Its big data capability reinforces this potential since it has billions of users on its products already, making it an easy transition for its customers. Reviews have already praised that it's a tremendously useful consumer tool and has the ability to be a key revenue driver for the company in the long run. Its clear Google has proven once again of its capability of making our lives far simpler. This innovative app will surely evolve to be a strong competitor in the online travel market.
SOURCES:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/19/google-launches-a-personalized-travel-planner-google-trips/
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/see-more-plan-less-try-google-trips.html
http://time.com/4500242/google-trips-travel-app-2016/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2016/09/23/heres-why-google-is-focusing-on-travel/#484404317bb4http://www.newseveryday.com/articles/47717/20160924/google-trips-travel-app-google.htm
http://www.newseveryday.com/articles/47717/20160924/google-trips-travel-app-google.htm