June 25, 2009

Google City Tours

Google Labs has a new experimental project that could become a part of Google Maps: City Tours. The service "helps you identify points of interest and plan multi-day trips to most major cities. You just specify the location of your hotel and the length of your trip and City Tours will map out an itinerary for you," explains Google.


For now, City Tours doesn't offer too many interesting features: it only lists popular sights and it suggests when you should visit them. You can edit the information about a place and you can add new sights, but the options are very limited.

It would be useful to show more details about sights from Wikipedia and from image hosting sites like Flickr or Panoramio. Google works on landmark recognition, a project that associates images from the web with landmarks, and City Tours is an obvious application.

{ Thanks, Dan. }
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17 comments:

  1. adminJune 25, 2009 at 4:50 AM

    Thank you for the news! This is just exactly what I was looking for this summer !

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  2. immaJune 25, 2009 at 6:17 AM

    Yikes, the placemarks default to dragable & say they save when you move them. Fortunately re-doing the search resets them & it doesn't seem to be affecting other users.

    The un-lettered placemark seems to be your hotel & moving it can re-plan the whole thing :-) Moving things your visiting around also appears to refresh subsequent suggestions

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  3. Jason McElweenieJune 25, 2009 at 9:12 AM

    When can we embed these on sites?

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  4. peter gabrielJune 25, 2009 at 9:35 AM

    Great, I am sure that Google will improve on what they already have and it will be a nice tool

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  5. AnonymousJune 25, 2009 at 11:19 AM

    I like how the first day of the NYC schedule maps out a pentagram. Very efficient route. :)

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  6. AnonymousJune 25, 2009 at 11:21 AM

    ...is there a way to reorder the sights? There should be...

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  7. Ben K.June 25, 2009 at 11:33 AM

    This has a long way to go before it's usable in my opinion. There's no integration with Google Transit; the so-called "sights" aren't very compelling; and the ability to add info and spots seems lacking. Good idea. Needs work. That's why it's in Labs though.

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  8. UnknownJune 26, 2009 at 5:52 AM

    more customizing options and options to save it and load it again on your mobile-maps and it's usable while traveling!

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  9. Yeast InfectionJuly 6, 2009 at 3:59 AM

    Its really a great thing. When can we embed these on sites?

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  10. web design and development irelandJuly 6, 2009 at 8:34 AM

    sweet. perfect to plan my trip to new york.

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  11. dublin blindsJuly 6, 2009 at 8:34 AM

    mobile access would be sweet..

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  12. AnonymousJuly 14, 2009 at 11:03 AM

    I keep getting error on page with city tours.

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  13. UnknownAugust 3, 2009 at 5:13 AM

    Is it possible to add ones own sights?

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  14. KestutisAugust 12, 2009 at 1:02 AM

    It's a great idea but for smaller countries the sites that are placed on the map are wrong location, some obcsure objects and most of the city tour offered is excursion from one hotel to another. Google should cooperate more with locals to put right sites and right addresses. Some day it will be very usefull I hope.

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  15. AcaiSeptember 9, 2009 at 4:49 AM

    Great, I am sure that Google will improve on what they already have and it will be a nice tool

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  16. UnknownDecember 30, 2009 at 2:40 PM

    I agree with a number of comments here. I don't think this has reached even close to its full potential yet. I have found a number of neat places to add to my local city tours but those additions are only available to myself. It is disappointing that a walking tour of downtown Seattle is half-full of hotels and department stores. There are way cooler things here. We should be able to edit the spots too as some of the information that isn't currently editable is incorrect.

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  17. BarboraNovember 25, 2011 at 8:50 AM

    Hi, we have developed a website with similar functionality - www.tripomatic.com. It is a trip planner built on Google Maps, it enables embedding the trips at your websites and adding your own activities.

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