Touring Bird comes from Google’s start-up incubator and offers guides to some of the coolest cities in the world
Google is a big company, but in today’s world, “big” will never be big enough. Companies today have a duty to grow continuously and Google is no exception. There are many ways that Google pushes itself further and farther, but one of the web giant’s standout efforts is its official startup incubator, Area 120. As a workshop for all of Google’s most “out there” and experimental products, Area 120 is where you’ll find all of Google’s wackiest efforts. If you think you might be interested in what these are you can sign up for early access to whatever Area 120 is cooking up here.
One Area 120 breakout may seem surprising. Touring Bird is a new travel guide website to help travelers… “explore, compare, and book tours, tickets, and activities from multiple providers in top destinations around the world—all in a single place.”
The main idea behind the site is to put all sorts of different touring and activity options for some of the coolest cities around the world into one place, for both mobile and desktop users. Touring Bird aims to give users access to the best tours and activities in each of the cities it covers. Some are even free!
As of now, Touring Bird is live for 20 cities including Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Las Vegas, Chicago, LA, and New Delhi. The company plans to expand further in the coming months. The tool allows users to search for activities based on different classifications like interest, traveler type, and activity type. So, if you’re a family of four on vacation in Chicago and you’re looking for a left-field type of experience that is educational for the kids, Touring Bird could be the website you need to help you find what you’re looking for. (Although if it recommends The Weiner’s Circle, we advise against it.)
Traveling might not seem like a natural fit for a search giant, but Touring Bird does seem to be trying to link up web users with what they’re looking for, albeit across a niche category.
On the Touring Bird website, the small team behind Google’s latest project to go live had this to say:
“Traveling to new places is fun and exciting—but for a lot of people, planning what to do once you’re there is not. It often involves hours of research, reading dozens of travel guides and blogs across the web, sifting through reviews, compiling your own lists, comparing prices and offerings, and asking friends and family for recommendations. No one wants to waste precious vacation time on disappointing experiences or miss out on the best ones… So, in late 2017, a small team of us within Area 120 (Google’s internal incubator for experimental ideas) set out to build a new tool that addresses this need, helping people find the best tours and activities across multiple providers.”
There is no doubt that organizing successful trips to exotic locations comes with its fair amount of stress. Some people, however, see this part of the trip as an exciting experience in itself, and those people might see Touring Bird as just another attempt to sell affiliated tours to travel-weary tourists. To set itself apart Touring Bird is reaching out to travelers to contribute with their own experiences, offer local tips, and to become part of an active community of travelers that will breathe life into Touring Bird.
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