Google shuts Trips app, everything migrates to broader Google Travel platform

The focus will initially be on the headline news of the day: Google will close its Google Trips app in August this year.

The search giant quietly updated the app's help page this week to reveal support for the product will cease after almost three years in the market.

The app was available for both iOS and Android smartphone users and was seen as another step in its ambitions to organize itineraries and keep travelers within the Google ecosystem when on the road.

It pulled content together from both the web and users into single service, giving them destination information and listings for their upcoming trips and reservations by adding flight and hotel reservation details from Gmail and Google Calendar.

Google is saying little about the closure, with an official noting via email: "We're evolving the Google Trips experience from a standalone app to an integrated part of trip planning across Google. Now, travelers can more easily plan trips on Search and Maps, where they already turn to for travel information.”

What it has done is direct users of the app to its much broader Google.com/travel area - a web-based platform (also optimized for mobile) that has grown in a piecemeal way over the years but now stands as a substantial service in its own right.

The features from Trips (content and upcoming user reservations) are available in Google Search and Google Maps, it says.

Upcoming and previous reservations are now included in Google.com/travel and users will soon be able to edit details there, as well as save ideas for things to do, attractions, etc.

Shuffling the chairs, not on the Titanic

The shift to a single home for everything that is involved in a trip, including the closure of the standalone app, should not come as a huge surprise.

Last month, Google's vice president for product management at Google Travel, Richard Holden, talked users through a number of the features of Google.com/travel and made no mention of the existing Trips app.

The central platform now includes trip details (past and upcoming), destination content (articles, videos, recommendations, reviews), flight search, hotel search and package search.

The noteworthy elements missing (at the moment) are ground transportation search (car rental, ride-hailing et al), cruise and tours and activities - the latter currently being provided via Google offshoot Touring Bird.

Any industry watchers hoping that the closure of Trips is some kind of reining in of Google's strategy in travel will be disappointed.

On the contrary, in fact.

Closing the app allows Google to concentrate on a web-based service with no need for updates for a standalone app (although there will be updates to the Google Maps app, for example) and ability to collect a user's data for reservations not limited to that held on a smartphone.

Whilst branding is rarely a consideration when it comes to Google, at least in terms of name recognition, having everything under one roof (Google Travel, rather than Google Travel and an app called Trips) will help channel users into a single place for search, shopping for travel products, itinerary management and information.

Nevertheless, all the functionality will be featured within Maps and Search, too, giving users the ability to access all the data-led services across multiple channels alongside Google Travel.

Google's sharpening of its travel strategy, at least from a front-end, user perspective, may not have immediate consequences on the industry.

But what it may do is equally sharpen the opinions of those (especially the likes of Booking Holdings and Expedia Group, who collectively spent $10.6 billion on digital marketing in 2018) that continue to question their ability to fund a brand that is actively competing against them.

* Check below for a selection of video interviews over the course of the last nine months.

Thijs Van As, lead product manager for Google Flights, speaking at Phocuswright Europe 2019:

Former-CarTrawler chief technology officer Bobby Healy's wide-ranging analysis (AKA criticism) of Google's ongoing involvement in the travel industry, also recorded during Phocuswright Europe 2019: