Facebook Launches City Guides, a Competitor to Google Trips?

Facebook appears to be following in Google’s footsteps with the newly launched City Guides, which reminds us of Google’s own Google Trips. The only difference is that the social media giant has taken things to the next level, allowing users to book hotels, make restaurant reservations and book city tours for their visit.

This was set in motion with little publicity, and allows the customers to book or make reservations through this app, unlike the Google Trips app, which does not allow users to make reservations.

In addition to these features, Facebook has also added something called “Places the Locals Go,” essentially a collection of ‘city hotspots’ that the locals frequent.

Fliers of KLM were the first to associate with Facebook’s new feature, which was introduced as a test feature last year, and enabled them to get their boarding pass, to check in and to receive updates on the status of their flight through this app.

This feature is expected to be more popular when compared to Google Trips, and aims at venturing into the booking and travel planning space generally occupied by travel agents.

“Facebook’s latest move into the travel ecosystem could be seen as a big challenge to Google,” wrote Skift analyst Dennis Schaal.

Facebook in increasingly bringing in features that other companies have successfully deployed, both into its main platform’s functionality as well as that of its other assets, such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.




This is the latest move by the social giant to optimize its platforms for increased user engagement, something that will prove vital in their growth plans for the future.

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