After planning a rather ambitious two-month trip to Europe this summer, I realized that there had to be an easier way to plan my trip than relying on four rather heavy and pricey tourist guidebooks. I also realized that I couldn’t plan much of my trip ahead of time—especially when the reality of travel in Europe is rarely in sync with my initial, optimistically laden plan.
Thankfully, the makers of Gtrot—a new social travel app designed to sync in with your Facebook and Foursquare accounts—have just the answer to a traveller’s planning woes. Gtrot simplifies travel by allowing individuals to share their itineraries with their friends, gathering tips and advice to create a seamless and up-to-date travel plan. Additionally, the app displays the list of friends who live in the city of interest, along with the friends who have visited the city in the past, based on geographical information gathered from Facebook data. To maximize efficiency and budgets, Gtrot offers a Groupon-like service, mapping out local deals and events which users can browse on a daily basis. Cutting out the heavy weight and lengthy read of guidebooks, Gtrot allows users to rely on helpful, current advice from fellow travelers, while saving their recommended locations into a coherent and flexible itinerary. The best part of Gtrot? Because of its innovative approach in pulling Facebook data, users don’t need to have any of their friends on the app to be able to optimize their trip. Try it out yourself at www.gtrot.com.
