 | Google Maps is global leader in local and international mapping having created, to an extent, ‘a digital mirror to the world’. RAC route-mapper is but a distant memory and today’s master of the route, Google Maps, with its real-time data, is deemed an essential tool for all travelers on two legs and four wheels; it’s a wonder we survived without it until 2005. Up until now it has required an internet connection to work. Luckily, it has recently been announced that Google Maps is set to go offline from the end of this year with the sole view of ‘mak[ing] traveling and exploring new places easier for people.' Amen to that. There’s no doubt that the internet has shone a spotlight on destinations. Five years prior to Google Maps, TripAdvisor arrived on the scene to mark the start of mass online public judgement of place, and is now widely regarded as the first port of call for most holiday-makers choosing where to wine and dine or lay their weary heads. Since then Facebook has played a role in sign-posting ‘must see’ places locally and internationally. Moving on from simply allowing users to ‘check-in’ and create travel maps, Facebook's app for iPhone has recently added another string to its bow with Facebook 'Place Tips’, which shows you more information about places you visit, including your friends’ photos, experiences and moments from said place. Apps designed to sign-post us in the right direction of those hidden gems we’re all too keen to feast our eyes on are increasingly emerging. Find my pick of 4 below and see what they have to offer... |
Launched: March 2015 Founder: Rossa Shanks and Rich Brown Cost: Free
Download it: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/glp-great-little-place/id943861610?mt=8
Download it: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/glp-great-little-place/id943861610?mt=8
GLP - ‘I know a Great Little Place’
The self-proclaimed guide to ‘Planet Earth’s charming spots’, this quirky app (which originated on Facebook in 2010 and developed into the website greatlittleplace.com) champions the independents, turning its back on ‘dull chains’. With over three thousand places across 40 cities in 6 countries, it aims to be your digital friend in the know, a friend with many connections. The app is a crowd-powered collection of nothing but the world’s greatest little places, and you’re more than welcome to add to the collection. Filtering results allows you to add a location and anything from drinks, food, coffee, entertainment, culture and activities…or all of the above! Each place comes complete with distance from your current location, a contact number and website link, and an indication of the price. A Tinder-like function allows you to swipe left ‘Not for now’ or swipe right ‘Shortlist for now’.
Benefits: The good news is that you can always go back to your ‘Not for now’ pile, or alternatively tap on a card for more information or to store it in your black book for later.
Benefits: The good news is that you can always go back to your ‘Not for now’ pile, or alternatively tap on a card for more information or to store it in your black book for later.
Dot - where it’s at!
Launched: June 8, 2015 Founder: Christian Verschareen Cost: Free
Download it: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id961988624
Download it: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id961988624
Dot aims to be the Wikipedia of location mapping: ‘What Wikipedia does for what something is, Dot does for where it is’. The app lets you comment at and about places and promises to ’solve location once and for all’. Dot takes a topic-agnostic approach, which means that it lacks in-built categories making it dissimilar to other location apps. Instead place searches are undertaken through hashtags or Users, following the same format as Twitter. You can add your own places (dots), tagging them with a hashtag to enable other people to find your dot. Users can follow friends and people with shared interests to discover stuff you like. Blue dots will mark the people you follow, whilst everyone else’s dots will remain white. I can see it working well for new but potentially transient places like street art and pop-ups…although it does rely on people using the same hashtags for similar places which isn’t always a given.
Benefits: Greater freedom to search for exactly what you want with the hashtag function.
Benefits: Greater freedom to search for exactly what you want with the hashtag function.
Locappy - ‘Discover your neighbourhood’
Launched: mid-June 2015 Founder: Seb S Lyall Cost: Free
Download it: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/locappy-discover-your-neighbourhood/id826420363?mt=8
Download it: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/locappy-discover-your-neighbourhood/id826420363?mt=8
Locappy is hyper-local, designed to support local economies, whilst catering for people’s desire to know what their immediate and constantly evolving London surroundings have to offer. It perceives of itself as ‘the missing connection between local businesses and local communities’. The app is keen to know your personal tastes from the get go- requesting your drink and food preferences on first open, followed by the neighbourhoods you are interested in, which allows you to keep your options as wide or as narrow as you fancy. Users can discover places based on the following categories: Going Out, Fashion, Beauty, or alternatively All Places. Each suggested place conveniently comes with distance from current location, opening times, and the option to call, like, check-in and share the place on Facebook and Twitter. A Neighbourhood Feed offers the chance to see the places that everyone in your neighbourhood is talking about, adding a social element to the app not too dissimilar to Facebook’s Place Tips. The app is also introducing a new Hoot! Feature, where you can tell your neighbours and friends about cool things in your area. A Hoot is just like posting something on Instagram. You tap the hoot button and select a neighbourhood or a local place you want to hoot about, take a picture, write a post and you’re done! Your hoot will go to the neighbourhood feed of that area, along with your Facebook and Twitter (if you connect them).
Benefits: Those in dire need in the early hours can click onto ‘Discover’ and straight onto ‘Open Places’ to pre-empt the hangover from hell, whilst anyone strapped for cash can see what offers are floating about. Businesses can reduce their spend elsewhere on social media by advertising their offers on Locappy instead.
Benefits: Those in dire need in the early hours can click onto ‘Discover’ and straight onto ‘Open Places’ to pre-empt the hangover from hell, whilst anyone strapped for cash can see what offers are floating about. Businesses can reduce their spend elsewhere on social media by advertising their offers on Locappy instead.
Insiders - ‘the ultimate tool to curate your lifestyle’
Launched: Web March 2015, App June 2015 Members only Founders: Inception Group and Insiders Cost: Free for basic use
Download it: https://appsto.re/gb/qUS-2.i
Download it: https://appsto.re/gb/qUS-2.i
This up-market app is slick in design and usability, its name setting the precedence for its exclusive look and feel. Being an ‘insider’ automatically makes you feel part of a VIP invitation only social club, in the know about the latest and best hang-out spots. Through the creation of individual user profiles the app has a more personal, socialite feel and by including publications, brands and celebrities as influencers, places have the opportunity to gain the stamp of approval from a voice of authority. Once a member, you can invite your friends and people whose tastes you trust.
The menu features the following:
Discover – to explore a library of lifestyle recommendations from trusted Insiders - whether this be people, publications or brands
Curate – to collate lifestyle and insider tips, and create your own individual guides
Add Discovery - add your own finds
Near Me – like most location apps you can see what’s near your current location, and zoom the map on any city in the world
Profile – giving the app a personal touch your profile shows who you are following, whose tastes you trust and thus who you have added to your inner circle, which guides you have created, and which discoveries you have made.
Benefits: Enjoy privileges - rewards and loyalty programme
Find out more: Membership currently by invite only. You must be registered with myinsiders to use INSIDERS - sign up for more information https://www.myinsiders.com/ Insiders is completely for free if you are only following brands, friends and celebrities/influencers. However, if you want to follow ‘Premium’ channels (i.e. Conde Nast, Hearst, Time Inc, Bloomberg & Net-A-Porter publications), the monthly fee is $9.99 per month.
All of the above aim to connect the offline and online worlds, serving as great ways to elevate places and get people out and about. Of course the cynic in me worries that when anything becomes too mainstream or popular, the notion of a ‘hidden gem’ becomes lost altogether, however any tool which helps build local economies can only be a good thing. Word of mouth is now inevitably word on screen, however there’s still something to be said for face to face interaction. Take my trip to Prague with my parents last December – I instantly took to Trip Advisor to suss out the best restaurants. My parents instead asked the receptionist, who pointed us in the direction of two fantastic places we might not have otherwise visited.
There’s something to be said for allowing locals to take more control over the tourist industry. Air BnB and HouseTrip are fine examples of how this can work from an accommodation point of view, and a Vietnamese start up is making leaps and bounds with bespoke tours. Travel guru Ha Lem co-founded the website triip.me in 2013, which has become one of the most talked about businesses in Asia. He Lem was inspired by the idea of ‘helping people to create memories’ [huck magazine]. At its core, the triip service believes that ‘the people you meet are the most important thing’, with physically meeting in person being of course the one thing that cannot be experienced digitally. The site allows locals to sign up to provide bespoke tours to travelers, who can book said tours online easily. The goal is to provide tourists with real experiences beyond the tourist traps, giving them a genuine taste of local flavour. Triip.me is only currently operating in South East Asia but has plans to go global in 2016. Whilst it has led to a densely informative and globally-focussed app, WikiTriip, it currently does not allow users to book tours. As with all things digital, watch this space!
Author: Sarah Moor
The menu features the following:
Discover – to explore a library of lifestyle recommendations from trusted Insiders - whether this be people, publications or brands
Curate – to collate lifestyle and insider tips, and create your own individual guides
Add Discovery - add your own finds
Near Me – like most location apps you can see what’s near your current location, and zoom the map on any city in the world
Profile – giving the app a personal touch your profile shows who you are following, whose tastes you trust and thus who you have added to your inner circle, which guides you have created, and which discoveries you have made.
Benefits: Enjoy privileges - rewards and loyalty programme
Find out more: Membership currently by invite only. You must be registered with myinsiders to use INSIDERS - sign up for more information https://www.myinsiders.com/ Insiders is completely for free if you are only following brands, friends and celebrities/influencers. However, if you want to follow ‘Premium’ channels (i.e. Conde Nast, Hearst, Time Inc, Bloomberg & Net-A-Porter publications), the monthly fee is $9.99 per month.
All of the above aim to connect the offline and online worlds, serving as great ways to elevate places and get people out and about. Of course the cynic in me worries that when anything becomes too mainstream or popular, the notion of a ‘hidden gem’ becomes lost altogether, however any tool which helps build local economies can only be a good thing. Word of mouth is now inevitably word on screen, however there’s still something to be said for face to face interaction. Take my trip to Prague with my parents last December – I instantly took to Trip Advisor to suss out the best restaurants. My parents instead asked the receptionist, who pointed us in the direction of two fantastic places we might not have otherwise visited.
There’s something to be said for allowing locals to take more control over the tourist industry. Air BnB and HouseTrip are fine examples of how this can work from an accommodation point of view, and a Vietnamese start up is making leaps and bounds with bespoke tours. Travel guru Ha Lem co-founded the website triip.me in 2013, which has become one of the most talked about businesses in Asia. He Lem was inspired by the idea of ‘helping people to create memories’ [huck magazine]. At its core, the triip service believes that ‘the people you meet are the most important thing’, with physically meeting in person being of course the one thing that cannot be experienced digitally. The site allows locals to sign up to provide bespoke tours to travelers, who can book said tours online easily. The goal is to provide tourists with real experiences beyond the tourist traps, giving them a genuine taste of local flavour. Triip.me is only currently operating in South East Asia but has plans to go global in 2016. Whilst it has led to a densely informative and globally-focussed app, WikiTriip, it currently does not allow users to book tours. As with all things digital, watch this space!
Author: Sarah Moor
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